Identity Meets Nationality : Voices from the Humanities [1 ed.] 9789988647995, 9789988647964

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Copyright © 2010. Sub-Saharan Publishers. All rights reserved. Identity Meets Nationality : Voices from the Humanities, Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2010. Sub-Saharan Publishers. All rights reserved.

Identity Meets Nationality: Voices from the Humanities

Edited by: Helen Lauer Nana Aba Appiah Amfo Jemima Asabea Anderson

Identity Meets Nationality : Voices from the Humanities, Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

© 2011 Faculty of Arts, University of Ghana

First published in Ghana 2011 by SUB-SAHARAN PUBLISHERS P.O.BOX 358 LEGON-ACCRA GHANA Email; [email protected]

ISBN: 978-9988-647-96-4

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers.

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Typesetting by Kwabena Agyepong Cover design by George Graham, Craft Concepts

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Contents Foreword

The Dean of Arts

Introduction

Editors

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Notes on the contributors

v vii xi

1.

The humanities and the idea of national identity

Kwasi Wiredu

1

2.

Empiricalism: the empirical character of an African philosophy

Kwasi Wiredu

18

3.

Metaphors of death in Akan

Esther Afreh

35

4.

Political nicknaming in Ghana: social representations of democracy achieved through conceptual blending

Gladys Nyarko Ansah

54

5.

“Do not rob us of ourselves”: language and nationalism in colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

74

6.

Language use in education in minority language areas: the case of Logba

Kofi Dorvlo

7.

The dilemma of identity for African American Reginal A. Duah, English: a case of African language influence? Abigail Ayigo, and Afua Mmra Blay

111

8.

Constructing a national language as a vehicle for national identity

Richmond Kwesi

135

9.

Material culture and ethnic identity: the case of the Krobo, Ghana

William N. Gblerkpor

149

10. Negotiating pre-colonial history and future democracy: Kwasi Wiredu and his critics

Helen Lauer

174

11. Identity crises: constructions of national identity in the poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

190

12. ‘No Sweetness Here’ for ‘Our Sister’, ‘La Noire’? Gender empowerment in the short stories of Sembéne Ousmane and Ama Ata Aidoo

Anne V. Adams

202

13 Constructing national consciousness in Russian literature: some lessons for the African milieu

Gamel Nasser Adam

225

14. Africa’s renaissance and the challenge of culture: the failures of NEPAD

Martin Odei Ajei

242

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100

Timothy E. Andoh

265

16. The Performing Arts: identity and the new social paradigm

Francis Nii-Yartey

282

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15. The music of Ephraim Amu and Isaac Daniel Riverson: ‘the known’ and ‘the not known’ Ghanaian composers

iv

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Foreword In 2003, through the initiative of Professor Kwesi Yankah, the then Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ghana, the Faculty started a colloquium series under the label Annual Faculty of Arts Colloquium. Since then, the Faculty has held its colloquium without fail from year to year. Colloquium 2009 marked the seventh in the series. Each year, the Annual Colloquium has provided academics in the Faculty a platform to share aspects of their research efforts with colleagues and the public. This platform has been particularly useful for some of the young professionals in the Faculty who have taken advantage of the opportunity to interact with older colleagues by placing their research output in the public domain for critical appraisal. From its inception, the Faculty Colloquium has always been built around a theme. In 2009, the theme was The Humanities and the Construction of National Identity. Even though this theme was chosen before December 2008 when Ghana went to the polls to elect a new government, some of the events and tensions that characterised those elections at that time convinced us that we could not have settled on a more appropriate theme. Indeed, the elections brought into sharp focus the fragility of our sense of identity as one people. But it is instructive for us to bear in mind as a nation that the cords of commonality in our literatures, languages, philosophies, religions, music, dances and theatre which bind us together far outweigh the sort of politics that seeks to tear us asunder. The importance that the Faculty of Arts attached to the theme of Colloquium 2009 led us to go into the Ghanaian Diaspora to bring Professor Kwasi Wiredu, one of the great minds that the University of Ghana ever produced, to speak on the theme. This accomplished philosopher delivered two plenary presentations that are both contained in this collection, which also includes selections from the panel sessions that convened over the two days. The contributions to this volume have gone through a rigorous process of blind peer review. In the past, some of the papers presented at the colloquia have been published in the Faculty’s journal, The Legon Journal of the Humanities. However, this volume represents the first effort to produce a book of v

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proceedings composed of the highest quality papers presented at one of our colloquia. It is my hope that this publication will mark only the first of many more of its kind to come. Prof. E. Kweku Osam Dean, Faculty of Arts University of Ghana, Legon

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June 2010

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Introduction Questions about how our social conditioning and historical circumstances influence assumptions about who we are—and how others perceive who we are—have attracted wide ranging discussion across the disciplines in the arts, humanities and allied sciences. Simultaneously, since the Independence period, scholars have deliberated over the varied implications of new states emerging throughout Africa. Consequently the interface between African identities and nationalities was the chosen theme for the Faculty of Arts’ Seventh Annual Colloquium held on April 15th and 16th, 2009 at the University of Ghana, Legon. The peer-reviewed selected papers for this anthology represent a cross section of the diverse perspectives discussed there, reflecting research and cross-disciplinary collaborations undertaken by members of our faculty and graduate students working in archaeology, literary criticism of African as well as English and Russian literatures, economics, history, cognitive psychology, linguistics, dance, music, philosophy, sociology, and the study of religions. This volume opens with two keynote addresses presented by the world renowned Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu, who was invited by the Dean of Arts to join his alma mater for the occasion from the University of South Florida in Tampa where he has been based for decades and is currently retired. Professor Wiredu takes as his point of departure the contemporary sense in which African identity is often said to be ‘in crisis’. Chapter One features Wiredu’s account of how Africans’ loss of identity derives from the unfinished business of decolonising attitudes towards African notions of divinity and indigenous systems of governance. In particular he advocates a greater appreciation of the traditional Ghanaian chieftaincy institutions of consensual democratic process. In Chapter Two, Wiredu probes what an epistemology would look like if it relied upon Akan metaphysicians’ reflections upon our awareness of the world through our immediate experiences. As a result of his experiment in eschewing the standard scholastic dependency on the British philosophical tradition, he derives a form of empiricism which is not unlike the foundation of the modern scientific enterprise, except that

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the Akan view does not indulge in the excesses of polarising the abstract from the concrete, or the sacred from the secular. Selections from the Colloquium’s panel presentations begin with Chapter Three in this volume, where the cognitive linguist Esther S. Afreh explores the implications of conceptual metaphor theory for understanding the structure of thoughts underlying the various expressions Akans use to talk about death. According to CMT, an increase in semantic complexity of metaphorical speech correlates with increased diversity among the beliefs held cross-culturally concerning a given topic. So far this hypothesis has been confirmed by research done on English and Turkish metaphors. Afreh refreshes and broadens the theoretical discussion with her analysis of the Akan data. In Chapter Four, Gladys Nyarko Ansah’s socio-linguistic study also features the way linguistic imagery reflects popular beliefs. But she analyses this connection between thought and semantic representation not as a function of deep cognitive structure, but rather as the effect of intentionally introducing into political discourse new idioms specifically designed to produce shifts in public opinion. Strategic manipulation of words in public discourse has important historical precedents for Ghanaians. In Chapter Five the linguist Kofi Saah and historian Kofi Baku illuminate the role played by early nationalist opinion leaders in the development of local languages, especially Nzema and Fanti. Through rhetorical acts of resistance, the first generation of Oxbridge-educated Ghanaian intellectuals helped to formulate a public identity independent of colonial ideology conveyed through their rejection of imperialist connotations tacitly conveyed through the semantic markers of standard British English. The role that one’s first language is assumed to play in the formation of one’s identity, and in turn the way that entitlement to learn in one’s first language enhances one’s intellectual capacity, have been the focus of vibrant debate and extensive research in Ghana. Analyses conducted by linguists and developmental psychologists have served as the backdrop for several turnovers of policy innovation in Ghana’s education sector over the last fifty years. In Chapter Six, Kofi Dorvlo reveals a contrast between the effects of using a child’s first language as opposed to second language as the vehicle of instruction for two primary school populations, a Logba speaking and an Ewe speaking community. The Logba viii

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speaking pupils who were taught in Ewe, which was their second language, appeared to be weaker in comprehension than the pupils whose first language was Ewe, the same as their language of instruction. A distinctive marker of identity the world over is the use of variants in pronunciation, syntactic pattern, and vocabulary. In Chapter Seven, Reginald Akuoko Duah, Abigail Ayigo, and Afua Mmra Blay address the degree to which African linguistic patterns are discernible in contemporary African American English. They contribute their expertise as linguists managing the African data in a highly charged debate which informs the politics of identity for US citizens marginalised because they speak variations of standard American English. In Chapter Eight, Richmond Kwesi explores the technical feasibility of establishing a hybrid national language designed to inspire solidarity and inclusive toleration in Ghanaians’ multicultural public life. Scientific investigation of a community’s cultural heritage can directly enhance the quality of life for members of that community, according to archaeologist William Gblerkpor. In Chapter Nine he reveals how the ongoing research activities of the Krobo Mountain Project is reinforcing a revival of local investment in Krobo indigenous social institutions and commitment to traditional Krobo values. In Chapter Ten, Helen Lauer argues that philosophical scholarship likewise is capable of reinforcing cultural integrity, provided interpretations of people’s intangible heritage refrain from gratuitous cynicism. She reviews two disparaging snapshots of Ghana’s precolonial political culture that have been advanced by critics of Kwasi Wiredu, arguing that the critics grossly misconstrue Wiredu’s advice to reform Ghana’s modern democratic process in light of indigenous Ghanaian political practices that dominated pre-colonial society. Some participants at the Colloquium explored contemporary Ghanaian identity by comparing it with other cultural heritages. Thus in Chapter Eleven, Joanna Boampong discusses ways in which the problem of national identity is problematized in the poetry of Equatorial Guinea. And in Chapter Twelve, Anne V. Adams visits the impact of devaluating social conditioning upon women’s sense of self and personal integrity, in her comparison of gender politics as treated in the short stories of the famed Senegalese film-maker Ousmane Sembène and the feted Ghanaian playwright Ama Ata Aidoo. In Chapter Thirteen, Gamel Nasser Adam ix

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draws compelling analogies between the history of national liberation in Russia and subsequent political revolutions throughout Africa. But just as compelling are the contrasts he illuminates between the Russian revolutionary literature and African liberation texts. In particular he observes that since Independence, the most popular works of African writers have been plagued with connotations and idioms endemic to the worldviews of their former colonisers, in whose languages their prose have been couched and disseminated. Adam argues that African literature consequently reinforces distorted national identities which are partly responsible for the perpetuation of underdevelopment on the continent. Another contributor who highlights the link between social identity perverted by colonialism and the continent’s economic disarray is Martin O. Ajei. In Chapter Fourteen Ajei explains that the economic shortfalls of the NEPAD agenda are due to its overall failure to take seriously the essential role that indigenous cultures must play in all aspects of economic development planning and implementation. The debilitating effects of formal education under colonialism did not end with its perversely long term impact upon Ghanaian literary output and economic development. Timothy E. Andoh observes in Chapter Fifteen how formal pedagogy in the colonial context has depressed the musical creativity and influence of seminal Ghanaian choral composers by dividing their identities into the reductive categories ‘known’ vs. ‘unknown’. The volume ends on a constructive note with Chapter Sixteen, in which the celebrated choreographer Francis Nii-Yartey recalls the exuberant role that indigenous African dance clubs have always played in character development within the crucible of traditional community life. He advocates the resumption of African dance instruction as a vehicle for fortifying the population’s sense of solidarity through a shared social identity and engagement with a positive national agenda. Editors Helen Lauer Nana Aba A. Amfo Jemima A. Anderson Legon, December 2009 x

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Notes on the Contributors GAMEL NASSER ADAM received his PhD in Russian philology from Pushkin Institute in Moscow. He is a senior lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages at Legon, where he was Head of the Department 1998 to 2000 and is presently the Coordinator of the Russian Section. . ANNE V. ADAMS is a professor of African Literature, on the faculty of the Department of English at Legon for many years. She was the Programme and Development Executive for the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture in Accra, Ghana, from 2005 until 2010. She is currently the Head of the Arts and Humanities Faculty of the African University College of Communications in Accra. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan. .

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ESTHER SERWAAH AFREH is a lecturer in English at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in Kumasi. She obtained an MPhil in English from the University of Cape Coast, and an MA in Cognitive Linguistics from the University of Brighton, UK. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Department of the University of Ghana, Legon. . MARTIN ODEI AJEI is a lecturer in the Philosophy and Classics Department at the University of Ghana, Legon. He obtained the DLitt et Phil from the University of South Africa, Pretoria. . TIMOTHY ESIAM ANDOH is a lecturer and currently the head of the Music Department in the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Legon. He received his MPhil in Music at the University of Ghana. He has been an artistic director of the Abibigromma Theatre Company, and is the founding director and conductor of xi

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the University of Ghana’s Jubilee Choir commissioned in 2009. . GLADYS NYARKO ANSAH is a lecturer at the Department of English, University of Ghana, Legon. She holds an MPhil in Linguistics and an MRes (Master of Research) in Cognitive Linguistics. She is currently studying for a PhD in Applied Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and English, Lancaster University, UK. ABIGAIL AYIGLO graduated with a BA in Linguistics and Information Studies from the University of Legon, where she is currently a graduate student of Linguistics and a part-time tutor of the Distance Learning Centre. .

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KOFI BAKU is a barrister at law and senior lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Ghana, Legon, where he is also the head of the department. He is the honorary secretary of the Historical Society of Ghana. His DPhil in Intellectual History was earned at University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. . AFUA MMRA BLAY is currently a graduate student of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ghana, Legon where she received her BA in Linguistics and is currently a part-time tutor at the Distance Learning Centre. . JOANNA BOAMPONG is a lecturer of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages, University of Ghana, Legon. She received her PhD from the University of Southern California. . REGINALD AKUOKO DUAH is a part-time tutor at the Distance Learning Centre of the University of Ghana. He holds a BA in Linguistics and Information Studies from the University of Ghana and is

xii

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currently a graduate student of the department of Linguistics. . KOFI DORVLO is a research fellow at the Language Centre, University of Ghana. He was awarded a PhD in Linguistics at Leiden University, Netherlands. . WILLIAM N. GBLERKPOR is a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Ghana where he received his MPhil. He is the principal investigator of the Krobo Mountain Archaeological Research Project, a collaborative venture of the University of Ghana and the Krobo Traditional Council, Eastern Region, Ghana. .

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RICHMOND KWESI holds a first class honours BA in Linguistics and Philosophy from the University of Ghana, Legon. He is currently writing his MPhil Part II thesis on the meaning of metaphor while working abroad in the Linguistics and the Philosophy Departments of the University of Rochester in upstate New York. . HELEN LAUER is an associate professor and currently the head of the Philosophy and Classics Department of the University of Ghana Legon. She received her PhD in Philosophy from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate and Research Center. . FRANCIS NII-YARTEY is an associate professor with the Department of Dance Studies in the University of Ghana’s School of Performing Arts, Legon. As former artistic director of the University’s Ghana Dance Ensemble and of the National Dance Company of Ghana of the National Theatre, he is at the forefront of contemporary African dance-theatre development in Ghana. He is a recipient of the State of Ghana’s Grand Medal. .

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KOFI K. SAAH is a senior lecturer and currently the head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ghana, Legon. He received his PhD in Linguistics at the University of Ottawa, Canada in 1994. .

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KWASI WIREDU was the invited keynote speaker of this Colloquium. He is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Department of Philosophy in the University of South Florida, where he has been based since 1987. Prior to that he taught philosophy at the University of Ghana, Legon from 1961 to 1983, becoming the head of department in 1971. He gained his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Legon and did his graduate work at Oxford University UK, where he studied with Peter Strawson and Stuart Hampshire as his tutors and Gilbert Ryle as his thesis supervisor. He has held Visiting Professorships in a number of universities, including the University of California at Los Angeles (1979), University of Ibadan (1984) in Nigeria, and Duke University (1994, 1999 -2001) in North Carolina, USA. < [email protected]>.

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The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity

Kwasi Wiredu

The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity Kwasi Wiredu The idea of identity usually comes into the focus of earnest discussion when there is a crisis of self-identity. In Africa the crisis has been the after-effect of our previous subjection to colonisation. Colonialism subjugated our people both culturally and politically. It is true that independence brought us some gains. But still our achievements in the decolonisation of various aspects of our life leave much to be desired. We need to examine or re-examine those aspects to find out which bespeak undue influences of the colonial past.

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Introduction To rectify the impact of colonialism cannot consist in merely jettisoning everything of a colonial origin, for some of it happens to be good. And this is the reason why the program of post-independence decolonisation must involve no less than the pooling together of our resources of abstract reflection and creative imagination. The reference here is quite obviously to the Humanities, for it is here, principally, that you have the study of human culture from a cognitive, normative and aesthetic standpoint. More concretely, the Humanities are a wide-ranging collection of frequently inter-connected disciplines. Traditionally, they comprise Language, Literature, Linguistics, Performing and Visual Arts, History, Archaeology, Philosophy and Religion. But parts of the social sciences, such as Anthropology, Economics, Sociology and Political Science are, to say the least, akin to the Humanities in terms of both content and method. If this looks like an embarrassing lack of determinate boundaries, it is an embarrassment of riches, for the decolonising project mentioned above needs all the hands it can get. 1

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The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity

Kwasi Wiredu

In Philosophy I have used the term conceptual decolonisation for the kind of decolonisation needed.1 This is because philosophy has a lot to do with concepts. Consider, for example, the concept of religion. Understanding this concept and its role in the thought of a given culture may reveal a great deal about their practical life. In some cases, such as in our own, conceptual impositions from a foreign culture may lead to confusions of thought with serious practical consequences. We have here, incidentally, an illustration of the fact that philosophy’s theoretical preoccupations may be for the sake of practical ends. When I say ‘our’, I allude to our identity as Ghanaian nationals. This is, of course, an extremely important object of inquiry. But a large component of it is our identity as Africans—a people still struggling to discover their true selves half a century after the end of colonial subjection. Two factors of identity in our lives are obvious, namely, our religion and our politics. I will start with the question of religion and end with politics.

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Religion and identity With regard to religion in our country, I find some confusing statistics. It used to be said that our population was a little over thirty percent Christian, about thirty percent Moslem and well over thirty percent traditionalist. But some are saying that Christianity alone now accounts for seventy percent. A more restrained investigator reports that Christianity has forty-one percent, Islam twenty percent, and the traditional twentyfour percent, leaving fifteen percent for the non-descript ‘Other’. Whatever the correct numbers are, one might be led to infer that traditional religion is rapidly losing its influence upon the population. But what does this mean? What is traditional religion in Ghana? The orthodox view of this matter will cite belief in God together with belief in, and worship of, a whole host of lesser ‘gods’ and ancestor spirits. Additionally, the chances are that the foundations of morality will be said to be ascribed to the will of God or, sometimes, to the instructions of a select group of ‘minor deities’ together with the ancestors. 1

For further discussion, see Kwasi Wiredu (1996) Chapter 10, “The Need for Conceptual Decolonisation in African Philosophy.”

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The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity

Kwasi Wiredu

An immediate question arises about who is supposed to be worshipped in the set-up just described. If one is going to persist in using the concept of worship in this context, then one would have to say that it is the lesser deities that are worshipped, rather than God. This is because there seems to be no custom of God-worship in Ghana. Accordingly, something like the following paradox emerges: To take the example of the Akans, it seems that they believe in the Supreme Deity but only worship the minor ones! The early Christian missionaries defined their religion in the Akan language as Onyamesom i.e. the worship of God and traditional religion as Abosonsom i.e. the worship of stones. To them, therefore, no paradox arose, because, as far as they were concerned, the traditional Ghanaians did not know of God. It remains a mystery, of course, why it did not strike them that they got the word Nyame, in the first place, from the language of the Akans. (Nyame means God and som means serve, and Onyamesom or Anyamesom is an evangelically motivated combination of both.) It begins to look like the concept of worship may not be an appropriate element in the definition of traditional religion. I propose to explain how from this hypothesis we may work out a more accurate conception of traditional religion. That conception will also have advantages when it comes to the clarification of the traditional understanding of moral conduct. Any such insight into our traditional life and thought should open to us prospects of a contribution to the reconstruction of our identity. Since the Humanities are qualitatively concerned with all aspects of human culture, any progress here should be an achievement for the Humanities. An even more obvious task for the Humanities is, or should be, the study of the causes of the political disasters that have befallen our continent since independence. No one cause is likely to explain everything. But sometimes one cause may explain a lot. Such, I think, is our failure in Africa to pursue a system of governance based on consensus. But for now let us return to religion. It is undeniable that our traditional religions here in Ghana are not institutional religions. There is not an organisation that you have to join, or in any other way belong to, before you can be said to be of a certain traditional African religion. Again, for the same purpose, you do not need to subscribe to a set of 3

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The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity

Kwasi Wiredu

dogmas. On the other hand, to be a Christian or a Moslem you need to subscribe to certain specific doctrines. For example, to be a Christian, you need to believe in God conceived as a transcendent being, who created the world out of nothing. You need also to believe that this being has an only begotten Son Jesus Christ who came to the world to die for the sins of its inhabitants. In practice, church authorities may not be able to rigorously enforce all aspects of this requirement, but it is a requirement nonetheless. In general, the doctrines are in the areas of metaphysical cosmology and ethics. The objective of this institutionalised propagation of doctrine is to ensure virtue and enlightenment for the flock. This objective tends to, though it need not, lead church authorities to require uncritical acceptance of doctrine. A common manoeuvre is to present at least some of the doctrines as revealed and therefore absolutely certain. Here dogma becomes dogmatic.2 In the promotion of virtue this same movement of thought is apt to lead to the definition of moral rightness in terms of the will of God. To say that something is right is then taken to mean that it is approved by God. Such a standpoint can hardly abide the habit of critical thinking, because it would be likely to raise fundamental questions not easily handled by church authorities. A non-institutional religion, on the other hand, is personal. It is an individual’s sense of her relationship with God or some ultimate principle. If you take, say the Akans, it is clear that the generality, though not the totality3, of Akans believe in a Supreme Being, who is responsible for the cosmos. They have trust in him and unconditional reverence for Him. But they do not worship him, because, I suspect, they do not

2

A dogma is a belief held with excessive confidence. When a belief is held to be infallible because it is not open to rational evaluation, it is a dogma in a technical sense. The dogmas of a religion are usually dogmatic in this sense.

3

Generally, traditional Akans have believed in God. But among their philosophers in the technical sense there certainly were sceptics. In Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective Chapter 9, Section 3 I have called attention to some Akan traditional sayings that I consider sceptical.

4

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The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity

Kwasi Wiredu

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think that it is appropriate to do so.4 What is clear is that the absence of things like dogma and worship facilitates a rationally relaxed attitude that forestalls any desire to persecute non-conformity, or even to proselytise other people. So, while the Akans, for instance, say that nobody teaches God to a child, they have no tendency to want to rise up in arms against anybody who does not believe that such a being exists. It can be said of a non-institutional religion, furthermore, that it is apt to promote a humanistic approach to ethics. People come to perceive that the teaching of morality belongs principally to the home, not to any outside organisation. Morality itself is conceived as the harmonisation of the interests of the individual with the interests of society where this is understood to be synonymous with the converse. This means that when we talk of adjusting the interests of the individual to those of society what we have in mind is the same as adjusting the interests of society to those of the individual. The synonymy is due to the fact that in both formulations only one principle of adjustment is envisaged, namely, what Christians call the Golden Rule. Using a formulation due to the American logician and philosopher Harry J. Gensler, we might state it as ‘Do not act to do A to X without consenting to the idea of S doing A to you in an exactly similar situation.’5 This rule is universally applicable in the evaluation of human conduct and can be regarded as the fundamental basis of ethics. But human beings shall not live by the 4

The Uchi people of Bendel State, Nigeria, would seem, traditionally, to be of this opinion, according to the following quotation from an article by C. S. Momoh (1989: 87): “Do not praise God . . . If God was waiting for you to praise him, he would never have created you. For example, I do not expect my son to heap praises on me, instead of referring to me simply as ‘father’. It is bad manners for you to praise God just as it is bad manners for my son to praise me. God is the creator . . .”

5

See Harry J. Gensler (1996: 93) Chapter 5. For a rigorous symbolic proof of the Golden Rule as just stated see the last chapter of the Gensler (1990). By a very natural generalisation, the Golden Rule becomes “Don’t act to do A without also consenting to the idea that any exactly similar act may be done.” See Chapter 6 of Gensler (1996: 123 et passim). Students of Kant’s ethics will note the similarity between the principle which Gensler calls a formula of universal law and Kant’s “Categorical Imperative.” We will not pursue here the question whether the two formulations are equivalent, except to note that when Kant denied the equivalence he was thinking of older formulations of the Golden Rule.

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The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity

Kwasi Wiredu

Golden Rule alone, but also by the rules of custom. And it is in the sphere of custom that we meet the great diversity of human values. If a custom violates the Golden Rule, it is, of course, bad wherever it may be. But if it coheres with the Golden Rule, it may be a legitimate rule of conduct with one people or group without so much as ever being heard of in another. The custom in some parts of the world that permits one woman to be in marriage with more than one man at the same time is not inconsistent with the Golden rule. But some like it; others don’t. It is custom that differentiates cultures. And we might say that communalism comes close to being a differentiating feature of African culture. Communalism is a social system in which kinship relationships are made the basis for interconnecting the well-being of the individual with that of the group. Again, there should be the proviso that the converse of this formulation is to be understood as being synonymous; otherwise it could become a formula for downgrading individuality. Gyekye has insisted most forcefully on this point in his theory of what he calls moderate communitarianism.6 In fact, what we are thinking of here is a system of reciprocities. Individuals are taught very early in life to see their well-being as being linked up with the well-being of a large group of kith and kin. This linking takes the form of recognizing an individual’s obligations to a great number of people. By the same token, a great number of people come to have obligations to him, which become rights. What is described here is analogous to the workings of the Golden Rule, although the sphere of the Golden rule lies deeper than that of custom. Communalism easily spills over from its kinship dimensions to the wider community. It is apparent from what has been said above, that for a member of a communalistic society, morality is a matter of human well-being as defined by the Golden Rule and Communal Custom. If so, then there is no necessary connection between morality and religion. And we can, without any appearance of paradox, say that traditional religion consisted of a personal belief and trust in God not associated with any organisation for the promotion of virtue. We see further that the foundation of morality was not thought to lie in the belief in God, 6

See Kwame Gyekye (1997) Chapter Two.

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as is suggested in some Western religions in which moral rightness is defined as what is approved by God. One unfortunate consequence of such a definition is that we can’t even say that God disapproves of evil. This is because of the definition whereby ‘evil’ means what is disapproved by God; so the remark in question becomes the tautology that God disapproves of what he disapproves. This will not bring enlightenment to anybody. Let me emphasise that what I have said does not imply that the belief in God does not have any role in human conduct. For those who know what is wrong but are yet tempted to do it, the fear of God may exercise a restraint that might slow them down or stop them altogether. But this does not make the fear of God the foundation of morals. Fear of the police is known sometimes to give pause to a prospective criminal, yet that fear has nothing to do with the foundation of morals. A wise traditional person does not need the fear of God for knowledge of the good or avoidance of the bad. If the foregoing depiction of traditional religion is in the right direction, then perhaps conversion to other religions does not manifest an understanding of the virtues of religious belief. One does not need to be a believer in any God to appreciate this. In a world in which dogmatic religions constantly exacerbate international conflicts to the peril of life and limb, it is refreshing to find a religion that has no use of dogmas and is devoid of the distinctive type of dogmatic rigidity that flows from them. There is, however, an obvious and important objection that needs to be dealt with. It might be objected that the conception of traditional religion given above is a seriously truncated one. It omits mention of the ancestors and of the lesser deities. It also omits the procedures of worship and sacrifice through which people seek the help of the spirits and deities. Yet these beings and procedures are very important in the study of traditional peoples. In answering this objection let us begin with some relevant comments from some famous philosophical expositors of traditional religion, in this case, that of the Akans. In the introduction to the second edition of Danquah’s The Akan doctrine of God (1968(1944)). Kwesi Dickson— may he rest in peace—remarks disapprovingly that Danquah conceives 7

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the Supreme Being as the beginning and end of Akan religion. He had earlier on quoted from Danquah to the effect that “[Actually], Akan religious doctrine knows only one God. Everything else found in the land in the form of religion is nothing else than superstition” (Danquah (1944) 1968: 39). In a later essay Danquah observes that the people do not have much reverence for the deities. Said he, “the general tendency is to sneer and ridicule the fetish and its priest (Danquah 1952: 6). Dickson in his characteristically urbane manner suggests that Danquah may not have appreciated the importance of the lesser gods. I will come back to the question of the importance of the minor gods. But we note that K.A. Busia (1954: 205) also makes a similar comment on these same gods. He says “the gods are treated with respect if they deliver the goods, and with contempt if they fail … Attitudes to the gods depend on their success, and vary from healthy respect to sneering contempt. . . ” (Busia 1954).7 Lastly, William E. Abraham (1962: 56) gives us his opinion of the gods as follows: “The proliferation of gods that one finds among the Akans is in fact among the Akans themselves superstitious. Minor gods are artificial means to the bounty of Onyame.” So are the gods important or not? The answer, in fact, is yes they are; but not for any role in Akan religion. They are important in Akan culture because belief in the existence of such supposed beings is widespread in Akan society; and people believe that the spirits in question can do all kinds of desirable things for them. But they are certainly not objects of worship. The general attitude to the supposed gods is too utilitarian. People will drum and sing the praises of the gods because they believe that those beings enjoy flattery, which induces them to work hard for them in their own way. But, there is nothing here that can be called worship. As Busia noted, if the gods don’t deliver, they can attract contempt. It can be worse. In some cases a minor god may be destroyed by his clients for ineffectiveness. In yet other cases a god can run out of vitality (nano atro), by the reckoning of his clients and degenerate into disuse. Then there is the question of character. Some lesser gods or spirits are 7

In his Introduction to Danquah’s The Akan Doctrine of God Dickson (1968: x) also notes this remark by Busia, though from a different perspective.

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judged to be good, some bad, and others indifferent. But, in relationship with even the ones that are judged good there always remains a felt need for continual prudence. This is, of course, on the assumption that the examiners can themselves pass the moral test. Perhaps many can, but certainly not all; for some people are believed to use evil spirits to harm other people. On this showing, it is difficult to see how the spirits, including even the good ones, could be elevated to the level of objects of religious devotion. Even less can we attribute to the people a religious attitude towards the ‘gods’, for such an attitude, if it is to be really religious, must involve unconditional reverence, which is the one thing that is lacking here. Comparisons with ancient Greek religion would not help much either. Someone might try to exploit the example of ancient Greek religion as a counterexample to my general claim that you don’t have a religion, unless there is an unconditional veneration for the object of attention. The argument might be that the ancient Greeks had no unconditional veneration for their gods and goddesses; and yet, for them, these beings were fitting objects of religious worship. To be of this mind is to have no pretences of an inkling of a monotheistic conception of God. Such, of course, was the cognitive plight of polytheists like the ancient Greeks. It was not until around the fifth century BC when the early Greek philosophers began to criticise the polytheism of their tradition, that monotheism became an option. On the other hand, Akan traditional religion is explicitly monotheistic, and the traditional Akans are not known ever to have had a like period of innocence. One of the best known words for God in Akan is Onyankopon, and this literally means “He who is alone great.” To affirm such a being is to postulate universal incomparability. The claim implied is this: Consider any possible being; it is false that it is as great as, or greater than, the Akan God. It is true that, as an alternative characterisation of ancient Greek religion, one might say, following Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones (2001) that there was, after all, quite a bit of monotheism in the fact that all the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece regarded Zeus as the greatest. Yes, but not as the greatest possible, which is what the Akan Onyankopon is conceived to be (Benjamin Ewuku Oguah 1984: 216), as pointed out above. That also is what God was seen to be by the lights of somebody like St. Anselm. 9

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By comparison with such conceptions any Zeus-inspired impression of an ancient Greek monotheism is best forgotten. By the same comparison, any talk of minor deities in the presence of Onyankopon, the Being than whom a Greater cannot be conceived, must be of little ontological worth. Onyankopon is, if we might repeat, responsible for the cosmic order. Within that framework a supposed minor god is as creaturely as the most modest fly. But the question still remains: Is it legitimate to talk of ancient Greek religion in the absence of the kind of Supreme Being who can evoke unconditional reverence? There are, indeed, conceptual and structural analogies with religion in ancient Greek life. But, at best, they would legitimise only a broad use of the concept of religion. A still broader concept of religion would be all that one can have if one insists on construing the Akan ‘lesser gods’ as objects of religious devotion. But such a manipulation of concepts could do nothing but harm our own self-understanding. In any case, it must be clear at this stage that, if you have Onyankopon, then you don’t need any further gods in order to have a religion. And this is of a piece with our earlier suggestion that traditional religion was of a non-institutional kind. Before leaving this part of our discussion, let us try to strengthen our sense of the dispensable status of the minor gods with a thought experiment. Suppose you and some friends travel to some kind of planet and come across some very strange living beings, who seem to speak English or American or, actually, any language that you can call up. They say to you, “We know that on your planet you are currently having a crisis in your economy. Well, we can solve the problem for you. In fact, we can teach you to solve any problem that you may have. For example, your space craft is too awkwardly constructed. We can improve it so that your journey back may be much, much, smoother than before. For all that, we ask for nothing but an occasional supply of whisky and a few recordings of Charlie Parker’s music. You know of Parker, don’t you? And, please bring a group of say five musicians consisting of a saxophonist, guitarist, pianist, double bassist and a drummer—what you call a quintet—to play us some live Parker-style bop, if you can’t do it yourselves.” Suppose that your return to earth in your reconstructed craft is as smooth as, or smoother than, a bus-ride on an American inter-state. And you are 10

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planning a second visit. Would you be willing to send your new friends in space the whisky and Charlie Parker? And, if you did, would that be worship? For my part, I would not say that there is anything religious in the situation. Certainly, there would not have been any act of worship, even though the mysterious communicators would appear to be much more talented than our own lesser ‘gods’. If our relationship with the space ‘people’ grew and extended to various spheres of our lives, it is easy to see that attention to the minor deities, where there was any, would dry up, and that would be an end of their story or the beginning of their mythology. Such a state of affairs need not necessarily affect the belief in Onyankopon. Therefore, it need not be adverse to traditional religion. This brings us back to the beginning of this discussion when we mentioned some (fluid) statistics about the religious composition of the population of Ghana. Traditional religion seemed, on those figures, to be rapidly losing adherents. Does it mean that a rising number of Ghanaians now don’t any longer believe in their minor gods? That may be so. But if they think that this means that they must see themselves as no longer subscribing to traditional religion, then they are confusing a supposed part with a supposed whole. I speak of a supposed part, because, as I have explained, the belief in minor gods is not a real part of traditional religion. Or, grant for the purposes of argument, that it is a part, then it is an inessential part. It may be, of course, that a contemporary Ghanaian becomes a convert to, say, Christianity because, although she retains the belief in Onyankopon, she feels that the lack of any tidings about Jesus Christ the Saviour in traditional religion disqualifies it from being a viable religion. Here arises an extremely important issue. Does he shift to the belief in Christ because he thinks that he has good reasons to do so or does he just believe ‘by faith’, as some say? One problem with this notion is that believing ‘by faith’ seems to amount to believing just because you want to believe. And such a method of thinking might be difficult to distinguish from the celebration of unreason. But there is an even more specific reason for some misgivings about this kind of ‘faith’ in matters such as cross-cultural shifting of religion. Christianity came to us alongside the colonial intervention in our lives. Many things in our lives now 11

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are owing to that intervention. Some of them are good, and evidently so, such as modern science and technology—although they would have served us better had we been left alone to appropriate these things by ourselves, of our own accord, as in the case of Japan.8 Still these are things that we believe we need to domesticate for our own good. In general, we need to examine things that came to us in the colonial process and determine whether they are to be retained or renounced. In this way we avoid the colonial mentality, which is a mark of a loss of identity. It cannot be emphasised enough that the suggestion here is not that an African being a Christian is a sign that he has a colonial mentality. What betrays a colonial mentality is the unreasoning abandonment of a traditional religion in favour of some foreign religion, in this case, Christianity. A Ghanaian who accepts Christianity on due reflection and another who rejects it also on due reflection both have their cultural self-identity as Ghanaians intact. Due reflection is the criterion; and one of its opposites is belief by ‘faith’,9 which means belief for no reason. Forsake due reflection, and you forsake your identity.

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Politics and identity This principle operates in politics with a special poignancy. The suggestion was made above that much of our post-independence difficulties may be due to our inability to devise a system of governance truly suited to us. Perhaps due to neocolonial distractions we have not been maximally attentive to the intimations of our own culture in this matter. So much the worse for our self-identity! At the present time, the form of polity predominant in Africa is multi-party democracy. This kind of democracy may be great for some people, though it is not so easy to see who those people are. Is it the people of the USA? Have you noticed how much hatred among themselves is generated by their multi-party competition for power during and after elections? Cannot the human mind think out a more morally 8 9

See further Kwasi Wiredu (1992: 60f ). This is only one use of the word ‘faith’. There are other uses of ‘faith’ that do not imply unreason.

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attractive way of arranging the political relationships of human beings? We know, of course, that the multi-party system is at least one thousand times better than the one-party variety. But this does not mean that it is fit for all times and places. The non-party system is an alternative that at least deserves to be considered. A non-party system is not necessarily one in which political parties are proscribed. That would be a denial of a fundamental human right, namely, the right of free association. One only needs to avoid putting into a constitution a clause, or establishing a convention, that invests the power to rule in the group that wins the significant majorities at elections. This one act of constitutional forbearance can be expected to do wonders. For example, most likely it will curb the winner-takeall mentality that permeates multi-party politics. It will also motivate people to pursue cooperation in running the affairs of a nation. We do not need to wait until human beings have become angels before we think of cooperating with others rather than ‘opposing’ them,10 in the making of decisions that affect us all. More specifically, let us consider the question whether we can develop in Africa a cooperative system of politics, as distinct from the adversarial type in which we find ourselves through the constraints of history. I see this question as an aspect of the more general problem of post-colonial intellectual decolonisation. I see it also as a matter of restoring our political self-identity. In this matter, it cannot be a source of discouragement for us to recall that in some parts of our continent consensus was the preferred decision procedure in politics. One can cite various places in South Africa, Uganda, and Ghana, among other places,11 in illustration of this claim. To learn from our past, with all necessary modifications, is an exercise in the recovery of self-identity. Suppose all these impressions of Africa’s 10 We can hardly take pride in the fact that the corresponding concept of opposition is a neocolonial accretion to our political vocabulary. 11 For South Africa, see Joe Teffo (2004: 443-449) “Democracy, Kingship, and Consensus: A South African Perspective.” For Uganda, see Edward Wamala (2004: 435-442 (1996)) “Government by Consensus: An Analysis of a Traditional Form of Demcoracy.” For the Akans, see Kwasi Wiredu (1996: 191-210) “Democracy and Consensus: A Plea for a Non-Party Polity.” Gyekye (1997: 115-143) has a more general discussion entitled “Traditional Political Ideas, Values and Practices: Their Status in the Modern Setting.”

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historical practice of consensus politics were illusory. Even so, a plea for the contemporary practice of consensus can have independent grounds. To pursue the idea of consensus politics on an ahistorical basis would then be an exercise not in the recovery of self-identity but rather in its construction. Either way it might be of some use to have some conceptual clarity about ‘consensus’. We begin with cooperation. This is an action-oriented concept; it envisages the achievement of common objectives among individuals through discussion. Consensus is closely connected with cooperation. It is its dialogical phase. Consensus can be, and I think ought to be, investigated from every observatory in the fields of the Humanities. Permit me to mount the philosophy observatory: I see, at least, three kinds of consensus. There can be consensus about matters of truth. When somebody says that there is a consensus among scientific cosmologies that the universe started with a big bang she is talking of something cognitive. We might therefore call this cognitive consensus. Note that what we have here is not necessarily the same as thing as unanimity of belief. It is rather a matter of general agreement. Of course, if you have unanimity then you have cognitive consensus. But, if you have cognitive consensus, it does not follow that you have unanimity. Distinct from cognitive consensus is what we might call ethical, or more generally, normative consensus. Consider the sentence: ‘It is a consensus among my friends that the death penalty ought to be stopped everywhere in the world.’ This relates to an agreement about what ought to be the case, not what is the case. It is therefore a normative matter, and so we may call the consensus a normative one. That what we have here is a consensus suggests that agreement was only reached after a significant amount of discussion. This is even more noticeable in the example of the first sense of consensus introduced earlier involving the big bang theory. The role of discussion is still more important in our third species of consensus. This is the kind of agreement among people that concerns what is to be done or what will be done as distinct from what ought to be done. Let us call this decisional consensus. Take, for example, the question of abortion. Those who believe that abortion is morally wrong can still agree, after a thorough parliamentary discussion of the issue in which their standpoint is treated respectfully, that abortion is to be 14

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allowed. Notice that they do not share the opinion of the group that, by hypothesis, is in the majority. That opinion is that abortion is morally alright. They disagree morally and visibly, but do not oppose. This enables the parliament or council to proceed with unanimity as to what is to be done. Such unanimity is what I call decisional consensus. Since we have mentioned a majority, let us quickly note that there are reasons to expect that if majorities are not born of power-seeking dogmatism, they will not always be composed of much the same people. But we cannot go into this matter here. One thing we can do here quite briefly, however, is to note the importance of compromise. The parliamentarian or councillor who believes that abortion is morally wrong but concedes that it still may be allowed, is compromising. But he is not compromising on his principles. He is making concessions lest his principles become an impediment to the broader interests of his society. One reason why it is so necessary to be clear about the three different types of consensus is that otherwise consensus seeking can take on the appearance of a quixotic quest for the impossible. Consensus, as noted above, often works through compromise. But there can be no such thing as cognitive or normative compromise. Either two plus two is equal to four or it is not. Or to return to our earlier example, the proposition that the universe started with a big bang is true or false or, if you insist, meaningless. You cannot, without forsaking intelligibility, say that you believe that the big bang claim is true, but in the interests of good social relations you will now believe that it is false. Nor, on the normative front, can you say that you believe that abortion is morally wrong, but you are prepared to believe that it is not morally wrong in pursuit of social harmony. What you can do, as we have suggested above, is to say that although you believe abortion is morally wrong, you are prepared as a gesture of cooperation to let it be done. This, to be sure, does not mean undertaking to stay forever silent about the morality or immorality of abortion. Dialogue is the watchword of any consensual polity. New cognitive and normative discussions can change the patterns of decisional predispositions in and outside of council. One can discern here the interplay of all three kinds of consensus. But in the most intractable cases of conflict it is decisional consensus that often saves the day. 15

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Let us note, however, that consensus has its limits, like (almost) all good things. Imagine that a bill in council, introduced by an impressive number of bribed politicians, demands that all males taller than six feet six inches should be executed because they are taller than the president, and he does not like it. With the best of intentions, no one can negotiate any sort of consensus in favour of such madness. And if this is a problem for consensus politics, it is even more so for party politics, whose inclemencies have already given a bad name to politics. A paradox: Many practitioners of party politics freely declare themselves lovers of consensus. The United States of America, for example, practices a severely adversarial system of multi-party politics. Yet leading figures on all sides vie with one another to claim the title of ‘consensus builder’. If the actual consensus buildings on the ground were anything commensurate with the eloquence of their protestations, American politics would have a different face from what it currently has. At best, the politicians are trying to reap the fruits of consensus without sowing the seeds of consensus. A system in which the dynamics are controlled by political parties, as we know them, is not a good choice, if what you are trying to do is to build a house of consensus. Africans might like to ponder these considerations as they review the role that political parties have played in sustaining their own political difficulties since independence. This is a mere preliminary to a prolegomena for the study of consensus as a foundation of politics. It may be that if we of the Humanities can begin to learn to see what some of our ancestors saw in consensus, we might have the clarity and the ability to bend the resources of the modern world to the construction of a befitting African political identity. Such an identity cannot be the reproduction of a traditional model. But it can be reminiscent of it.

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References Abraham, William E. 1962. The Mind of Africa, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Busia, K.A. 1954. The Ashanti. In African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples. (Ed.) Daryll Ford. Oxford University Press, pp.205-215. Danquah, J.B. 1952. Obligation in Akan Society. West African Affairs 8. London: Bureau of Current Affairs, for the Department of Extra-Mural Affairs, University College of the Gold Coast. Danquah, J.B. 1968 (1944). The Akan Doctrine of God: A Fragment of Gold Coast Ethics. London: Frank Cass. Dickson, Kwesi. 1968 (1944) Introduction. The Akan Doctrine of God: A Fragment of Gold Coast Ethics. London: Frank Cass. Gensler, Harry J. 1990. Symbolic Logic: Classical and Advanced Systems, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Gensler, Harry J. 1996. Formal Ethics. London and New York: Routledge. Gyekye, Kwame 1997. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience. New York: Oxford University Press. Lloyd-Jones, Hugh. 2001. Ancient Greek Religion. American Philosophical Society, 145(4) December: 456-464 Momoh, C.S. 1989. Uche Doctrines on Creation, God and Man. In Nigerian Studies in Religious Tolerance: Volume 1: Religions and their Doctrines (Eds.) C.S. Momoh, M.S. Zahradeen and S.O. Abogunrin. Ibadan, Nigeria: Shaneson C.I. Ltd.

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Oguah, Benjamin Ewuku. 1984. African and Western Philosophy: A Comparative Study. In African Philosophy: An Introduction. (Ed.) Richard A. Wright. Lanham, University Press of America. Third Edition. Teffo, Joe. 2004. Democracy, Kingship and Consensus: A South African Perspective. In A Companion to African Philosophy. (Ed.) Kwasi Wiredu. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 443-449. Wamala, Edward. 1996. Government by Consensus: An Analysis of a Traditional Form of Democracy. Reprinted in A Companion to African Philosophy. (Ed.) Kwasi Wiredu. 2004. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp.435-442. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1992. Problems in Africa’s Self-definition in Contemporary World. In Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies I. (Eds.) Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu. Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (CRVP). Accessible online . Wiredu, Kwasi. 1996. Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wiredu, Kwasi. (Ed.) 2004. A Companion to African Philosophy. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.

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Empiricalism:

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Empiricalism: The Empirical Character of an African Philosophy Kwasi Wiredu One by-product of colonialism was that our identity—cultural, religious, political—tended to be defined by others. The results were not always as accurate as they could have been. Now one half of a century after independence, Ghanaian scholars in the humanities are, as befits their disciplines, still keen on the right understanding of their identity. In the discussion below, the author takes up epistemic identity on the hypothesis that if you seek first clarity about fundamentals, some insights about a lot of other things, including political identity, might be added unto you.

1. Akan language and the expression of abstract ideas

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Africans are frequently said to think in concrete rather than abstract terms. The following cognate characterizations of African thought are also often encountered. African thought, on this account, has a practical rather than a theoretical bent. Moreover, its orientation is supposed to be empirical rather than metaphysical. All three contrasts are explicit or implicit in the following quotation from Kenneth Little’s “The Mende of Sierra Leone” (in Forde 1954: 112-113): [The fact is that] the Mende are not given very much to theoretical speculation. I found it difficult to draw them out on questions of an abstract kind, and I am inclined to suspect that their lack of interest in this respect is due, not merely to the alien nature of some of my concepts, but to a genuine feeling of indifference ... My general impression [therefore] is that the Mende have an essentially ‘practical’ attitude to life ... This, I think, explains their lack of interest in metaphysics ... The situation seems to be that they regard ‘supernatural’ phenomena in much the same way and frame of mind as they regard the material circumstances of their environment . . . Such an attitude is also, within the bounds of Mende knowledge, quite empirical.

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These were the impressions of a foreign observer. Remarkably, however, African scholars have tended to concur. Witness the following: (1) E. Bolaji Idowu (1962: 39) “The Yoruba do little abstract thinking;” (2) John S. Mbiti (1969: 30), “Broadly speaking, African thought forms are more concrete than abstract;” (3) Okot p’Bitek (1970: 85) “The Nilotes, like the early Jews, do not think metaphysically.” These contrasts, as I shall argue below, carry only half-truths. Besides, their corresponding half falsehoods embody serious misunderstandings about African thought. Let us take them one by one, with our principal focus on the thought and language of the Akans of Ghana. I hope others will compare the situation in their own languages with that in Akan. My citations of Akan cases are useless unless they can encourage such comparisons. Regarding the theoretical/practical issue, any small attention to the repertoire of philosophical maxims of any African people should disabuse the mind of the notion that traditional Africans necessarily had a disability or disinclination to theoretical thinking. The half that is true here is that frequently a theoretical reflection would be couched in a practical phraseology. This would most likely say something about one level of the word’s origination rather than its acceptation. Generally, the ascent from practical vocabulary to theoretical thought will be via metaphor. On any understanding of the nature of language, it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this expedient. Next if we take the matter of the concrete versus the abstract, it is unquestionably true—and here is a specific instance of the half that is true—that the Akan language, for example, is extremely economical in abstract nouns. One usually gets by with a gerundive paraphrase. Thus beauty is feye (being beautiful), goodness is papaye (being good), kindness is anyemye1 (the being good of the inside of the stomach), selfishness is pesemankomenya (wanting to have everything for myself ), carefulness 1

Kwame Gyekye (1977) has done a study of the physicalistic etymology of psychological concepts in Akan in his paper “Akan Language and the Materialist Thesis.” His main concern in that paper was to explain that this etymological physicalism did not imply any real physicalism or materialism. Or see the extremely important chapter 11 of his An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (1995) especially pages 167-169.

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The Empirical Character of an African Philosophy

Kwasi Wiredu

is anidaho (keeping your eyes open), insolence is aniammowoho (not being watchful of appropriate norms; etymologically, not having your eyes attached to yourself ), and so on. Obviously, such a language offers little excuse for the postulation of abstract objects—a practice with which, in Western philosophy, the name of Plato is often associated. In languages like English it seems plausible, at least initially, to suppose that if something is red then there is an entity called redness in virtue of which the thing is red. If you usually had only the gerund—in this case, ‘being red’—to operate with, as in Akan, this ontology would most likely carry no attraction for you. Thereby you might be saved from a potentially intractable conundrum. It might be objected that such physicalistic etymology is not unknown in English, for example. We speak, for instance, of a person with a certain attitude as having his heart in the right place, but this does not necessarily presage any form of physicalistic metaphysics. The point of the illustration is not the apparent physicalism of the phraseology, but its gerundive character. Yet it is not at all true that there is any shying away in the Akan language from the expression of abstract ideas, as the contrast being examined implies. The ideas expressed in English by abstract nouns are expressed in a different way in Akan, but they are expressed all the same. In other words abstract nouns are not the only possible way of expressing abstractions. Even in English there are ways of expressing abstract ideas other than through abstract nouns. The Akan paraphrases of the abstract nouns in English given above are English expressions, and they do express abstractions! Furthermore, a word like ‘man’ is not an abstract noun, its abstract version being ‘manhood’; but it expresses an abstraction of a high degree. The word ‘time’, again, is not an abstract noun, but it stands for an idea whose degree of abstractness must exceed that of a great many abstract nouns. Think, for example, of the comparatively limited abstractness of an abstract noun like ‘hardness’. In truth, all words, syncategorematic words and all the rest, express some degree of abstraction. It is, for example, because the word ‘by’ in suitable semantic surroundings expresses the idea of agency or propinquity that it is able to combine with the words ‘written’ and ‘Plato’ to produce the unit of meaning expressed by the phrase ‘written by Plato’, or with the words ‘passed’ and ‘river’ to express the thought in 20

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‘passed by the river’.2 Thus, if Africans have any languages at all that go beyond demonstrative gutturals—and even these are arguably abstract if they succeed to communicate any thought—they must have a handle on various kinds of abstractions. In the matter of expressing abstract ideas, then, the difference between English and Akan is that in English, in addition to various grammatical devices for abstract discourse, including some that are analogous to the Akan verbal renditions noted above, there is a frequent recourse to abstract nouns. In Akan such alternatives are rare. Now, one thing about abstract nouns is that they appear to endow their meanings with an objectual individuality. Thus the word ‘kindness’, just like the word ‘redness’ which we commented on a little earlier, sounds as if it designates a special kind of object or entity with which particular kind acts enjoy a certain relationship. This ontological suggestiveness is absent from the phrase ‘being kind’ which nevertheless expresses the same idea as ‘kindness’. The suggestiveness of the abstract noun form is not the only thing that can encourage what (adapting Ryle) we might call the “‘Fido’-Fido” metaphysic of abstract entities;3 but it certainly has been known to be quite seductive. In large part, the absence of this temptation from the Akan language (and I suspect from other African languages) means that the languages themselves do not incline the mind towards a Platonist type of metaphysics.4 And it should be noted that inclining or disinclining, 2 C. I. Lewis in his Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946) argued persuasively for the view that syncategorematic words have meaning. [‘Syncategorematic’ refers to those terms including prepositions, articles, logical connectives and others whose meanings are wholly determined by their supportive roles in the syntax or grammar of sentences.—Ed.] 3

See Gilbert Ryle, “The Theory of Meaning” included in his Collected Papers, Vol. II where he calls the theory of meaning which supposes that every noun must designate an object the “‘Fido’-Fido” approach to meaning.

4

‘Platonism’ is still quite rampant in Western philosophy. People think that numbers, for example, are abstract objects; that concepts exist independently of the mind, and so on. Such ontological beliefs would be prohibitively implausible in traditional Akan ears. It is conceivable, of course, that Akan ears may need Western therapy in this matter. My own ears, however, remain immune to such therapy, and I have offered criticisms of the postulation of abstract entities or objects in “A Philosophical Perspective on the Concept of Human Communication,” which appears as Chapter 2 of my Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (1996) pages 13-20.

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rather than necessitating (apologies to Leibniz) is all that we are suggesting language can do. However, nothing I have said above implies that the Akan language offers any disincentive to metaphysics in general.

2. The empirical and the metaphysical

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This brings us to the third contrast, namely, that between being empirical in orientation and being metaphysical in understanding. The familiar claim is that African thinking is exhaustively empirical and innocent of metaphysical reflection. This is quite a severe misunderstanding. A mode of thinking can be both empirical and metaphysical, and I am going to suggest that traditional Akan metaphysics is an empirical metaphysic. To start with, let me explain that by an empirical metaphysic I do not mean a system in which every proposition is empirical. An empirical proposition is, of course, one whose truth or falsity can be known only through experience. In this sense, metaphysical propositions generally would be non-empirical. But a statement may be non-empirical with respect to the question of its truth-value and still empirical with respect to its conceptual constitution. The latter is a deeper cognitive issue than the question of whether a proposition is empirical with respect to its truth-value. Consider, for example, the proposition ‘All brothers are male.’ This is an analytic proposition.5 By definition its truth-value depends upon the relationship of the concepts by means of which it is constituted, and so its truth-value can be known through analysis. The proposition 5

I do not share the qualms of Morton White (1950), Willard Quine (1953) and others about the analytic-synthetic distinction. In my opinion the analytic-synthetic distinction is a purely semantical distinction; it has no special epistemological significance. But both its proponents and its critics have tended to associate analyticity with a marvelous kind of certainty unavailable to synthetic propositions. This investiture of the analytic is spurious. The truth-value of an allegedly analytic proposition may be as elusive as that of a synthetic proposition. Nor is it hard to find a synthetic proposition that is more certain than some analytic one. For example, the contingency of error hangs more heavily on the claim regarding some given systematization of predicate logic that it is deductively complete than on the proposition that there is a country in Africa called Ghana. This disclaimer regarding analytic propositions applies also, mutatis mutandis, to necessary as well as a priori propositions; the latter too do not have any special claims to certainty.

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is non-empirical, that is, a priori. Yet, quite obviously, the concepts of brother and male are empirical. They are concepts that are formed and can only be formed through experience. It is not quite as obvious, perhaps, that the other two concepts in the proposition, ‘all’ and ‘are’, are also empirical. But the following considerations should prove decisive. The concept ‘all’ indicates one way of attending to the items of our experience, alternatives to which are indicated by words such as ‘some’ and ‘most’. These words refer to modes of experiencing in the first place, and to modes of reflecting upon our experiences and their objects in the second place, and—potentially—to modes of acting on the basis of our experiences in the third place. Thus, quantificational concepts are derived from experience. The word ‘are’, which is a form of the verb ‘to be’, is even more fundamentally bound up with experience. It alludes to the fact of recognition, which is an integral aspect of any cognitive experience. I would say, in general, that any concept, which is derivable from experience or refers to an aspect or mode of experience, is an empirical concept. But propositions framed in terms of such concepts need not be empirical. Some will be empirical, others a priori, but all will be empirical in their conceptual constitution. The a priori part of an empirical metaphysic will only include a priori propositions constructed out of empirical raw materials. Such propositions may be analytic or synthetic, depending on how narrowly analyticity is defined. If an analytic proposition is defined as one whose truth-value follows from the definitions of its terms, then some a priori propositions will not be analytic since some a priori propositions may contain crucial concepts that are simple and therefore unanalyzable and indefinable. But, if, on the other hand, an analytic proposition is defined broadly as one whose truth-value depends solely upon the meanings and relations of its constituent terms, then an a priori proposition cannot but be analytic. However, it is important to note that this last definition of analyticity is broader than that which has been predominantly operative in some very historic uses of the concept. Neither Kant, the originator of the analytic/synthetic terminology, nor for example the logical positivists, who made a crucial use of it, seem to have distinguished clearly between the 23

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two forms of the definition. The ambiguity can, of course, be rendered harmless if it is made clear which definition of analyticity is operative in a particular piece of discourse.6 Further, it should be observed that a metaphysical system might include empirical propositions and normative ones as well. Metaphysical theories are frequently both analytical and synthetic in a sense that is different from, though related to, that of the analytic/synthetic distinction previously discussed. Such theories may be called analytical simply in the sense that they seek to analyze or bring out what is involved in our conceptions of fundamental aspects of human experience and the external world. And they also may be called synthetic in that they seek to organize the conceptual elements thus elicited into patterns of discourse displaying enough coherence and perspicuity to solve or dissolve our fundamental puzzlements. Conceptions of what it is to be a person, for example, may involve matters of empirical fact about our capacities as well as normative facts about fundamental social desiderata. Thus a metaphysical system may contain propositions of different logical types (analytic, synthetic, or normative) and of different epistemological types (a priori or empirical).7 All this is without prejudice to what we may call, risking a barbarism, the constitutive empiricalness of the propositions concerned. To illustrate: The conception of a person entertained by many African peoples, certainly by the Akans, has two aspects: one descriptive, the other normative. Descriptively, a person is held to consist of a bodily frame (Nipadua), and a life-giving principle deriving directly from the Supreme Being. This constituent of human personhood is called the okra. Together with it there is also postulated a constituent called sunsum which is thought to give rise to the degree of personal presence that is unique to each person. In their rich philosophy of personhood the traditional Yoruba have a similar analysis of the descriptive aspects of a person 6

I have discussed this question in “Kant’s Synthetic a Priori in Geometry and the Rise of Non-Euclidean Geometries” (1970) especially pages 13-18.

7.

The position changes if what we are talking about is a metaphysical proposition rather than a metaphysical system. A metaphysical proposition has to be nonempirical, and its subject matter has to be some fundamental aspect of a worldview.

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that is basically similar to this. On both views the two elements, which may be called quasi-physical, unite in a psycho-physiological system to form a human individual. (By calling a supposed entity quasi-physical, I mean that it is physical in terms of imagery but does not seem to be governed totally by the ordinary laws of physics.) Normatively, however, such an individual is not yet a person in any context of social commentary. This status awaits the development of certain basic levels of competence in the discharge of moral, familial and communal duties. Here, in a metaphysical context, is an assembly of conceptions of various logical and epistemological kinds. By the way, in her own philosophy a contemporary Akan philosopher need not construe the ôkra and the sunsum as any sorts of entities. In their traditional conception these notions are quasi-physical; but in contemporary analysis they can be construed as aspects, not components, of personhood. One reason why it is tempting to think that metaphysics necessarily must be non-empirical is that in Western philosophy there have often been times when metaphysicians have claimed insight into realms of reality that transcend possible experience. Claims of this sort are so remarkable that it is not very surprising that they have left their imprint on the popular image of metaphysics. This transcendental image of metaphysics has existed not only in the minds of lay persons. It was, in fact, the essence of the logical positivists’ impression of the subject. Kant, who in a way (but only in a way) was a forerunner of the logical positivists, undertook a radical critique of previous metaphysics, which he convicted of trafficking in transcendental or—to be faithful to Kant’s own terminology—transcendent entities. He wanted to put metaphysics on “the sure path of science.” And one way in which he sought to do this was to proscribe any postulation of entities that are inaccessible to possible intuition, that is, possible experience. He did not call this an empirical approach to metaphysics, because he took too dim a view of the capabilities of empirical cognition in the quest for certainty, thinking to find this only in pure (a priori) concepts and propositions. In fact, if he had wielded his principle of possible experience as a condition of intelligibility throughout his critique of pure reason consistently, the result would have been an empirical metaphysic.

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In actual fact, Kant compromised his own principle early in The Critique of Pure Reason by investing two of the most pervasive concepts of human thought with a transcendent as opposed to an empirical status. I am referring here to Kant’s theory that space and time are neither entities nor relations nor aspects of the world of phenomena but rather pure, a priori intuitions, conditions of our own faculty of perception, which he called the sensibility. Space and time are, to follow his manner of presenting the matter, not representations that we form through our experience of the world but preconditions of our having any experience at all. Kant was vigorously explicit in denying an empirical status to [the concepts] of space and time. There is at least one crucial ambiguity in Kant’s proof of the apriority of space and time in the Critique of Pure Reason. It is not always clear whether what he is talking about is the concept of space or the referent of that concept. Let me explain. In communication we have to use signs. These are, in themselves, purely physical existents, signifying nothing. It is by means of our own semantical conventions that we associate with the sign meanings, conceptions, or connotations. By this process the sign becomes a word, or, in company with other words, a sentence. Let us call what is thus associated with the sign its signification. Then it is natural to ask with regard to a given word whether there is something to which it refers (by virtue of its signification).8 Some words do refer; others do not. The word ‘house’ does refer to some objects. On the other hand, the word ‘unicorn’, by the best report, fails to refer to any object. Let us call what a word refers to, when it does refer to something, its referent. Then we will say that the sign “house” has a signification, which we may also call the concept of a house, and that by virtue of this signification it has a referent. By contrast, the word ‘unicorn’ has a signification but no referent. Consider now a claim of the following sort by Kant (1965 (1781): 68): “Space is a necessary a priori representation, which underlies all outer intuitions.” One is immediately assailed by doubts as to the coherence of the statement if one asks whether by 8

This analysis of language does not have the honor of descent from Ferdinand de Saussure, in spite of an initial analogy. See, for example, extracts from him in Michael Lane (ed.) (1970).

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“space” Kant means here the signification of the word space (i.e. the concept of space) or instead its referent. To return to Kant’s principle of possible experience, namely, the principle that we cannot know anything that lies beyond the bounds of possible experience, there are other ways too in which he compromised it. For example, there is his concept of the thing in itself, which was by definition inaccessible to possible experience. He also spoke of sundry processes (that he called “syntheses”) of the understanding by which the supposed raw materials of sense were transformed into the perception of phenomena—processes which, by definition, were not themselves knowable through experience. And one might recall his bringing into his philosophy, through moral considerations, belief in a transcendent God after having, to his satisfaction, debunked all speculative proofs of the existence of such a being. Can such conceptions hold any allure for an alert psyche socialized in the Akan framework of thought? I think not—at least not as far as the present Akan is concerned. The crucial consideration has to do with language; and my suggestion is that Akan and kindred languages are such that transcendental concepts—concepts referring to entities, beings, processes, relations, that are, in principle, not conceivable through possible experience—are not expressible in those languages without demonstrable incoherence. To substantiate this claim I propose to take some very fundamental concepts of human discourse, first in English; and then I will show how their equivalents in Akan discourage transcendental thought or talk in the Akan medium. The following concepts certainly fall within the class just mentioned: Space, Time, Existence, Substance, Thing, Quality and (at a somewhat less abstract level) God, Person, and Nature. These are all concepts that Kant treated at length, some of which we have already mentioned above in connection with him. Below we will only be able to treat of space and time.

3. Empirical concepts of time and space Let us consider, then, the concepts of space and time. Kant argued in the section called the “Transcendental Aesthetic” in the Critique of Pure Reason that these are not empirical concepts. According to him, they 27

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are not concepts that are obtained by generalization or extension from limited instances. He maintained that they are rather what he called pure intuitions, and we start with them as infinite wholes, introducing limitations only afterwards as we proceed with specific discriminations of phenomena. One major problem in Kant’s argumentation, as we hinted above, is that he speaks of space, now as a concept, now as a referent, without seeming to attach any significance to the difference.9 Yet, even if it is granted that the notion of space is a priori, it does not follow that what the notion refers to can so much as be spoken of as being a priori or otherwise. ‘A priori’ applies to a mode of knowing, not a kind of entity or existent. If space is infinite, it may still be that the only way to conceive of it is through the notions of location or place10 and of infinite extendibility, both of which are empirical. This is certainly how space is conceived in the Akan language. Thus the late Dr. Paul A. Kotey’s dictionary of the Twi language (2007 (1996): 275) handles space as follows, ‘place (space) (n) fa, afa, baabi’ (Literally, fa means ‘side’ as in ‘your side’ and baabi means ‘somewhere’.) Mentioning ‘space’ under ‘place’ is not what is remarkable about this piece of lexicography; English dictionaries do so too. What is remarkable is construing ‘space’ as just another word for ‘place’. The Twi Dictionary does not give a separate entry for ‘space’. I see here the workings of an Akan-influenced understanding. This conception of space is however susceptible to a second degree of abstraction. At this level the concept of space may be thought of as an ideal scheme of metric order. This is a degree of abstraction likely to be invoked for mathematical purposes. The important consideration, however, is that the conceptual ascension can be made from the relatively ‘concrete’ concept of space as infinitely extendible location. Note that we are talking here of the concept of space, not its referent. Regarding the concept of time, there can be little doubt that it is thought of by the traditional Akans as an order of events. The point is 9

This is perhaps not surprising in the inventor of transcendental idealism; for idealism, transcendental or not, thrives on the conflation of concept with object.

10 If D. W. Hamlyn (1984: 129) is right, Aristotle’s conception of space was similar. “Aristotle has no concept of space as distinct from places.”

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not just that the reckoning of time was only done in terms of events, such as the rising and setting of the sun, or that the dating of events was made by reference to memorable occasions such as the declaration of a war or its prosecution. The point is rather that the idea of time itself was conceived to be logically bound up with the notion of events. It may be noted in passing that there is, in fact, no other possible way of reckoning and dating events. In the absence of instruments like watches it is natural to resort to events like sunset in keeping track of time, but to use a watch is not to dispense with the reference to events. The clock-wise careers of the hands of watches or the digital apparitions on an electronic watch are as much events as the rising or setting of the sun. Nor can there be any dating of events except in terms of other events. Numerically systematized methods of dating are, admittedly, more efficient than the rather impressionistic methods of dating by memorable events. But the numerical methods are apt to foster forgetfulness of the fact that the numbers are nothing but allusions to relationships of vast arrays of events. This fact is more easily impressed on the consciousness by the use of the more dramatic method of dating by historic reference. Among the Akans, this last approach naturally serves to fortify the conception of time itself as an ordering of events rather than as some sort of entity. To be sure, this fortifying is metaphysically useful, because there are in Akan11—as there are in English and probably many other languages—turns of phrase that metaphorically objectify time; and metaphysicians can be taken in by such figures of speech. The most famous or — for many contemporary African philosophers — infamous treatment of time in African philosophy was given by John Mbiti in his African Religions and Philosophy (1970: 85). According to him, time for African peoples in their traditional life “is simply a composition of events which have occurred, those which are taking place now and those which are inevitably or immediately to occur” (Mbiti 1989 (1970): l6-l7). If we interpret his word “composition” as meaning the same as ‘ordering’ then we can accept this as a basically accurate 11 For example things like this are said in Akan: Mmre reko na mmre reba which means literally, ‘Times go and times come’. Or, again, Mmre akongua yenni nka so (No one sits on the throne of time for ever. Literally, ‘No one sits immovably on the throne of time.’)

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representation of the conception of time entertained by the Akans. An immediate qualification, however, needs to be entered. The Akan conception of time comprehends, in its future dimension, not only events “inevitably or immediately to occur,” but also those of the infinite future of whatever metaphysical status. It is because Mbiti seemed to suggest that Africans have an abridged sense of the future that many African philosophers have been (justly) scandalized by his account.12 But his basic intuition as to the African conception of time is to the point, at least as far as the Akans are concerned. The notion of event is obviously one that can only be formed through experience and, hence, the concept of time as a “composition” or ordering of events is diametrically opposed to Kant’s conception of time as a “pure intuition” with its ontological and epistemological implications. The view of time as an ordering of events—what is usually known as the relational view of time—is, of course, not peculiar to Africa. Leibniz famously held time to be “an order of successions” as opposed, incidentally, to Newton who had an “absolute” view of time, according to which time is an entity which “of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external.”13 The absolute concept of time is, however, not necessarily antiempirical. It admits of alternative theories as to its manner of formation. Together with the relational theory, it may also be contrasted as objective from Kant’s doctrine of time as subjective, even if in deference to Kant’s terminological stipulations we have to preface “transcendentally” to “subjective.” A difference, however, between Leibniz’s and the Akan conception of time is that the latter but not the former is integrated into an immanently empirical style of thinking.14

12 See Kwame Gyekye (1995) Chapter 11 Section 2; and Kwasi Wiredu (1996). 13 For both quotes see J. J. C. Smart (ed.) (1964) pages 89 and 81. respectively. 14 This discussion of time is more intuitive than systematic. It is more informative regarding our experience of time and the immediate implications of that experience than with respect to the cosmological nature of time. That is enough in terms of the question of the way in which we, human beings, come to know time. A more theoretical characterization of time will have to marshal the resources of philosophy in combination with such scientific disciplines as astronomy and cosmology.

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4. Empiricalism The style of thought that I have described above is essentially empirical in its conceptual constitution. Its cognitive imperative is, ‘Do not admit any existents or categories of existents unless they are supportable by empirical evidence or empirically based conceptual reflection.’ My identification with this mode of thinking (which I find in my own culture) is complete as far as the implementation of this empirical imperative is concerned. But someone might want to know why I did not offer my own thoughts directly and on my own cognizance instead of tracing the issues through Akan language and thought. The reason is connected with the peculiar situation of contemporary African philosophers. Owing to the historical misfortune of colonialism, the education of an African philosopher living today is conducted at least partly in some Western tradition. His own indigenous tradition of philosophy was more or less ignored during colonial times. Now, in postcolonial times, attention is being restored; but there is a problem of synthesis. Since it would not be rational to reject out of hand every conception or technique of thought originating from the West or to accept every indigenous doctrine of philosophy uncritically, it is desirable to work out a careful synthesis. Certainly, I think that an African philosopher may avail herself of insights and lessons from Western philosophy and, for that matter, Eastern philosophy, for the construction of an African philosophy suitable for contemporary existence. For instance, given my engagement with Kant in this discussion, it can be inferred that I think it useful to look at what he has to say. In the first place, because one is doing philosophy in a European language, it is often necessary—for the purposes, at least, of clarity—to be mindful of the theoretical presuppositions of the technical terms one uses. Such terminology is unavoidable, yet hardly ever doctrinally innocent. But in the second place, I personally happen to think there are important insights and lessons to be had from Kant even when, as in the present discussion, one is in disagreement with him. And, by the way, disagreeing with a philosopher can be one way of honoring him. In the matter of an empirical orientation, David Hume and (nearer 31

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our own times) John Dewey are even more relevant than Kant. But my own empirical predilection is from home; and this leads me to a philosophy which, though having something in common with the empiricism of Hume (and his spiritual uncles Locke and Berkeley), is very different from classical empiricism. What my view has in common with empiricism is the belief that all our knowledge of the external world is derived from experience and further, as with Hume, that all the concepts involved have a similar origin. The reference here to the external world is important, because without it the empirical thesis reduces to the absurdity that all our knowledge, including, for example, logical and mathematical knowledge, is empirical! But our view parts company with empiricism in its construal of experience as a process in which the (immediate) object of the mind is an idea or an impression, where an idea or an impression is a sensation. This thesis easily turned into idealism in the hands of Berkeley, who inferred that everything must be a mind or an idea in a mind. In the hands of Hume the inference was even more radical: If the object of perception is always an impression or idea, then not only can we not suppose the existence of things existing independently of the mind, but also there cannot be any mind or ‘self ’ at all, only successions of impressions and ideas. If we need a word for this view, we might invent for it the word “ideaism.” Anybody will be hard put to it to render any of these positions in Akan with any slight show of sobriety. In this language the notion of a sensation will only be rendered by some such phrase as the circumstance of sensing or feeling something (atenka). Thus, if it ever entered into any Akan head to recommend empiricism to her compatriots in their own language, he would have had to try to inform them that in all perception the immediate object of the mind is the circumstance of sensing or feeling something. Not, though, that these solecisms will survive any careful scrutiny in English itself, their home of birth, though the exorcism might be more labor intensive than in Akan. It did not, for example, escape the American realist critics of idealism in the last years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth that idealism confused the mode of cognition with the object of cognition. Yet, because saying (in English) that the object of perception is an idea is not as well adapted to 32

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evoking chuckles as attempting the same message in Akan, this criticism did not shake the equanimity of the idealists unduly. Empiricalism, if I may be permitted a terminological monstrosity, is the adherence to the empirical imperative without the sensationalistic incoherencies of empiricism. It is the view which close attention to the conceptual intimations of my own culture renders the most plausible to me regarding the fundamental character of human knowledge. Because of the references to the Akan language in this sponsorship of empiricalism, it may be prudent to subjoin a disclaimer. I do not claim that any ordinary or even extraordinary Akan would, on suitable provocation, be in a position to enunciate, for example, the above contentions about space and time. For one thing he may never have considered such issues;15 for another, given an interest and some practice in this kind of reflection, he may well arrive at different conclusions. Indeed, philosophical thinking being what it is, one should anticipate the opposite of unanimity on such matters among contemporary Akan philosophers. Fortunately, I notice that the lack of unanimity in the interpretation of language has not silenced the philosophers of other cultures. It is important perhaps to emphasize, even more than I have done in the above disclaimer, that I do not appeal to language as an arbiter of philosophical wisdom. Language can sometimes facilitate the perception of a philosophical truth or falsity, but it can never be its sole criterion. If what one language suggests is valid, then in principle it should be arguable in any other language, as is clear in the example of sensation as the object of perception just briefly touched upon above. It is because of this that dialogue is at all possible among the different cultures of the world. Two virtues, then, are sought after here: one, to be particularistic enough to be capable of knowing ourselves; and two, to be universalistic enough to be capable of knowing others. Or perhaps these are two sides of the same virtue. 15 This alludes to the fact that in Akanland, as in all other places, the average person is not a philosopher (in the technical sense), a point that is relevant to the question whether African thought is practical rather than speculative. The implied answer is that it depends upon which African you talk to. Of course, if you look carefully, you will find speculative thinkers in traditional Africa, contrary to the impression which the practice of relying on ‘informants’ as sources of information about African thought is apt to foster.

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The Empirical Character of an African Philosophy

Kwasi Wiredu

References Forde, Daryll. 1954. African Worlds. London: Oxford University Press. Gyekye, Kwame. (1987) 1995. An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme. First edition Cambridge University Press, revised edition, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Gyekye, Kwame. 1977. Akan Language and the Materialist Thesis: a short essay on the relation between philosophy and language. Studies in Language 1 (2): 227234. Hamlyn, D.W. 1984. Metaphysics. Cambridge University Press. Idowu, E. Bolaji. 1962. Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief. London: Longman. Kant, Immanuel. (1781) 1965. Critique of Pure Reason. Transl. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Kotey, Paul A. (1996) 2007. Hippocrene Concise Dictionary: Twi-English, English-Twi. Third printing. New York: Hippocrene Books. Lane, Michael. (Ed.) 1970. Introduction to Structuralism. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Lewis, C.I. 1946. Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court. Mbiti, John. (1969) 1989. African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinemann. Mbiti, John. 1970. African Religions and Western Scholarship. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Quine, Willard V.O. 1953. Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In From a Logical Point of View. New York: Harper and Row. Ryle, Gilbert. 1971. The Theory of Meaning. Collected Papers. Volume II. London: Hutchinson & Co., pp. 350-372. Copyright © 2010. Sub-Saharan Publishers. All rights reserved.

Smart, J.J.C. (Ed.) 1964. Problems of Space and Time. New York: Collier Macmillan. White, Morton. 1950. Analytic-Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism. In John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom. Sydney Hook (Ed.). New York: The Dial Press. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1970. Kant’s Synthetic a Priori in Geometry and the Rise of NonEuclidean Geometries. Kant Studien. January: 5-27. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1996. Time and African Thought. In Time and Temporality in Intercultural Perspective. D. Tiemersma and H.A.F. Oosterling (Eds.) Amsterdam/ Atlanta: Rodopi. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1996. Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

Metaphors of Death in Akan Esther S. Afreh The paper examines the metaphorical structure of the domain of death in Akan within the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). My aim is to show the coherent conceptual organisation underlying the various expressions about death in Akan, and also to test the universal applicability of the types of mappings in the English language proposed by Lakoff and Turner (1989) and Fernándes (2006), and those in Turkish proposed by Özçalişkan (2003). Since the CMT maintains that primary metaphors are universally applicable and complex mappings more culturally diverse, the analysis of the Akan data was considered a good empirical ground for testing the validity of this proposal. The analysis reveals a high degree of similarity between the English, Turkish and Akan mappings although some cross-cultural variations especially between English and Turkish on the one hand, and Akan on the other were discovered.

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Introduction One of the claims widely received in cognitive linguistics has been that linguistic meaning is a manifestation of conceptual structure. That is, the meanings of linguistic expressions are reflections of concepts in the minds of speakers. In the view of cognitive linguists, these concepts grow out of “our collective biological capacities and our physical and social experiences as beings functioning in our environment” (Lakoff 1987: 267). The idea is that the mind is to be understood in the context of its relationship to a body that interacts with the world. One theory from cognitive semantics in support of this claim is the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) whose basic premise is that conceptual structure is organised by cross-domain mappings. Cognitive metaphor theory has 35

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

served as a useful tool in analysing how different domains of knowledge are metaphorically structured. This paper examines the metaphorical structure of the domain of death in Akan within the framework of the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). My aim is to show the coherent conceptual organisation underlying the various expressions about death in Akan, and also to test the universal applicability of the types of mappings in the English language proposed by Lakoff and Turner (1989) and Fernándes (2006), and those in Turkish proposed by Özçalişkan (2003). Since the CMT maintains that primary metaphors are universally applicable and complex mappings more culturally diverse, the analysis of the Akan data provides an opportunity to test this proposal empirically. The analysis reveals a high degree of similarity between the English, Turkish and Akan mappings, although some crosscultural variations exist, especially between English and Turkish on the one hand, and Akan on the other. Previous research has mainly focused on Indo-European languages, giving us detailed accounts of the way speakers of these languages think and talk about various conceptual domains. For example, an earlier analysis of the domains of death and life by Lakoff and Turner (1989) identified the following metaphors for English: birth is arrival, life is a journey, death is departure, death is a person, life is a play, life is a burden, and life is bondage (death is deliverance). Following Lakoff and Turner (1989), Özçalişkan (2003) also analysed the domains of birth, life and death. The metaphors she identified for Turkish include the following: birth is arrival, birth is crossing a boundary, life is a journey, life is a burden/struggle, death is departure, and death is a person. This paper summarises the results of a similar analysis for Akan, a language belonging to the Tano subgroup of Kwa languages which is a major branch of the Niger-Congo languages. It describes the metaphorical structure of the domain of death in Akan within the framework of the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) with the aim of revealing the coherent conceptual organisation underlying the various expressions about death in Akan. Since CMT proposes a distinction between primary and complex conceptual metaphors, with the former more likely to be uni36

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

versally applicable and the latter more culturally diverse; the paper also tests the universal applicability and cross-culture variations of the types of mappings by Lakoff and Turner (1989) and Fernándes (2006) in their analysis of the English language, as well as those identified by Özçalişkan (2003) in her analysis of Turkish. Since complex mappings are believed to be more culturally diverse, the analysis of the Akan data is considered a good empirical ground for testing the validity of this proposal.

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1. The conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) The conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) was originally put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) who sought to provide cognitive explanations that capture the manner in which mind, body, and world mutually interact and influence one another to make life meaningful and effective for an organism. In that work, they analysed a number of linguistic examples of metaphors, and discovered that our ordinary conceptual system is by nature, metaphorical. These metaphors, they termed, “conceptual metaphor.” According to Rohrer (2006: 123), “they dubbed the notion of ‘conceptual metaphor’ both in order to distinguish it from the prior tradition of ‘linguistic metaphor’ (or ‘literary metaphor’) and in order to emphasize that conceptual metaphors are a matter of cognition and conceptual structure.” In the CMT, metaphor is thus defined as “a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system” (Lakoff 1993: 203). Some examples include when we talk and think about life or death in terms of a journey, and so use expressions like life is a journey or death is a journey. When we do this, we map one conceptual domain to another, or there is a mapping from what the proponents have termed a source domain to what they have also termed a target domain (Lakoff 1993). According to Lakoff and Johnson, the source domain is more closely related to physical experience than the target concepts. They further explain that each mapping involves a set of correspondences between the respective entities in each domain. For instance, in the love is a journey metaphor, there is a conceptual mapping from the source domain of journeys to the target domain of love. The mappings for this metaphor are as follows (the arrow stands for ‘corresponds to’): 37

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Esther S. Afreh

the travellers A the people in the love relationship the vehicle A the relationship the journey A the course of the relationship the distance covered A the progress the difficulties encountered A impediments to travel the destination A the goals of the relationship Our conceptualisation of love in terms of a journey systematically influences the way we talk about love. The mappings can be ‘primary’ or ‘complex’, with the former being derived from more basic physical and cognitive experiences than the latter (Grady 1997). Primary metaphors are considered as natural outcomes of the interaction between our physical and cognitive composition as human beings and of our experience in the world. Since such embodied experiences are universal, the corresponding primary metaphors, according to Lakoff and Johnson (1999), are universally acquired. For this reason, the authors claim that primary metaphors are universals that are learnt; they are not innate. Complex metaphors, on the other hand, are considered to be formed or built out of primary metaphors plus forms of commonplace knowledge or beliefs that are widely accepted in cultures. For this reason, the authors claim that complex metaphors are more likely to show cross-culture variation than primary metaphors which stem from universally applicable experiences.

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2. Language, data, and method The Akan language refers to a group of very closely related and mutually intelligible dialects located in much of the southern half of Ghana (Osam 2004). It is the most widely spoken of all the Ghanaian languages. Its dialects include Agona, Akuapem, Akwamu, Asante, Akyem, Assin, Bono (Brong) Fante, Kwahu and Wassa. For the purposes of this paper, I draw all my examples from Asante Twi of which I am native speaker. The justification is that my intuitions as a native speaker will be useful in the analysis of the culture-specific metaphors (if there are any). The Akan data were gathered from a wide range of sources including texts, song lyrics, funeral announcements on radio, and everyday expressions about death which I provided myself. Having collected a number of linguistic expressions from these sources, I first inferred their interpretations. Based 38

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

on those inferences, I grouped and analysed them into major metaphorical mappings. The mappings follow Lakoff and Turner’s (1989) initial categorisation of similar phenomena in English. I then described the metaphorical structure of death in Akan and compared it with the mappings in English and Turkish along with a discussion of the data in relation to the CMT. In the paper all the conceptual metaphors are shown in capitals and the mappings for each one of them provided. Linguistics examples extracted from the various sources with their morpheme-bymorpheme glosses are also provided for illustration.

3.1 Analysis and discussion of Akans’ view of death

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In Akan, death is conceptualised as a transition from one life to the other. Through the Akan rituals of burial and funeral, the dead person is considered to have been separated from this life and sent to the underworld to begin another life as a ghost or as an ancestor. This transition involves the bodily transition from a human being to a ghost, as well as a movement from one place to another. The departure is thus seen as the beginning of a journey to a final destination. This idea makes use of the basic or primary metaphor that states are locations that one can be in, or change of state is change of location. In Akan, life is arrival. Through the cultural practice of child naming ceremonies, newly born babies are ‘welcomed’ into the world. Death, then, constitutes one’s exit from life, and it is thus conceptualised as departure from life. This view is also held in English and Turkish.

3.2 Death is departure In Akan common expressions for the metaphor death is departure include the following: 1 Ô-kô ne kra akyi 3SG SUBJ-go (COMPL) 3SG.POSS soul back ‘He has gone behind his soul.’ (i.e. He is dead.) 2)

ô-a-firi

mu.

3SG SUBJ-PERF-leave inside ‘He/She is dead.’ (i.e. He is dead.) 39

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

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(3) ô-a-firi wiase. 3SG.SUBJ-PERF-leave world ‘He/She is left the world.’ (i.e. He is dead.) It is worth noting that in the expressions, the verbs kô ‘go’ and firi ‘exit’ focus on the act of leaving. In Akan, the mappings for this metaphor are as follows: Act of departing A Act of dying One who departs/sets off A Deceased Preparations for the departure A Burial and Funeral Rites Destination A To God’s house / Land of the dead or ancestors In examples (1) to (3) above, the deceased is considered to have moved and for that reason taken as being alive. However, a dead person in actual fact cannot move. By these expressions, then, Akans refute the fact that death entails immobility. This conceptualisation in Akan is either based on a religious belief that there is life after death, or in a cultural belief that ‘the dead is not dead’. This cultural belief is so strongly held that sometimes Akans address dead bodies as if they were alive, thereby assigning them the human qualities they used to have, and thus never cutting them off conceptually from the world of the living. If death is a departure, there can be departure points, such as doors. A common expression in Akan to indicate the departure point is owuo kwan ano (4) O-gyina 3SG SUBJ-stand death road mouth ‘He is at the threshold of death.’ Lakoff and Turner (1989: 11) cite the following for English:

(5) Death hath a thousand doors to let out life. Philip Massinger (1619) A Very Woman Act v. Sc. 4; quoted in Lakoff and Turner (1987:11). The departure from life can be actualised in so many ways. Three main ways have been identified in English and Turkish. These are that the dead person initiates the exit from life, the soul exits the world, and death or illness (personified) causes the departure of the person. In addition to these three, Akans hold the view that the departure may 40

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Esther S. Afreh

also be a call or an invitation from God. In Akan when the departure is initiated by the deceased, the common expression used is

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ne wuo. (6) ô-a-pâ 3SG SUBJ-PERF-search 3SG POSS death ‘He searched for his death’ (i.e. He is the cause of his own death) It is worth noting that the Akan sentences in (1), (2) and (3) also indicate the role of the dead in the exit. Akans make use of the active voice in those expressions. This is an indication that the subject arguments, in this case the dead, are the agents of the actions expressed; they initiate their own movement. There is a view in Akan that the individual is composed of the three essences—soul, body, and spirit. Sarpong (1977: 5) explains that the soul is received at conception and is “a small indestructible part of God which He gives to the individual before birth.” At death, the soul is not transformed in any way, but returns intact to the owner, God. The body becomes the corpse which is buried and the spirit turns into a ghost. This is the belief upon which the idea of the soul leaving the world is based. A common expression in Akan is: kra a-tu a-firi wiase (7) Ne 3SG-SUBJ- POSS soul PERF-fly PERF-leave world ‘His soul has flown out of the world’ (i.e. He is dead) This belief is similar to the one in English which states that “the father’s lodge is the soul’s final resting place after death” (Lakoff and Turner 1989: 15). Typical expressions in Turkish about the soul’s exit are can bedenden çkkar ‘core of life exits from the body’, ruh vücuttan ayrklkr ‘soul leaves the body’ (Özçalişkan 2003: 292). This particular view of the soul exiting the world is based on the primary metaphor body is container. It is important to note that whereas in Akan it is the world at large that serves as a container for the soul, as the expression in (7) indicates, in Turkish, as Özçalişkan (2003) has noted, it is the human body that is conceptualised as a container in which the soul is located. Death is most often personified when it causes the departure. In Akan, when death is understood as a ‘summoner’ in this sense, it is considered 41

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

as someone the dead person meets, as the expression in (8) indicates, or someone who comes to take the dead person away as (9) illustrates: wuo (8) ô-a-hyia ne 3SG SUBJ-PERF-meet 3SG POSS death ‘He has met his death.’ (i.e. He is dead.) a-fa no kô (9) Owuo Death PERF-take 3SG OB go-COMPL ‘Death has taken him away.’ (i.e. He is dead.) We should note that in the Akan expressions in (8) and (9), the means of the departure is not indicated. This makes it quite different from the instances in Turkish where death as a summoner is conceptualised as a moving entity that comes to gather people “either on foot or on horseback” (Özçalişkan, 2003: 305). This clearly indicates some of the common means of movement in that culture. Lakoff and Turner (1989: 11), citing examples from Yeats and Horace, also indicate that in English the means of departure can be a ship as implied in (10), or a raft as exemplified in (11):

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(10) Swift has sailed into his rest (W.B. Yeats, “Swift’s Epitaph”) (11) We are all driven to the same place Sooner or later, each one’s lot is tossed From the urn—the lot which will come out And will put us into the eternal exile of the raft. (Horace, Bk 2, Carmen 2.25-28.) None of the means of movement indicated in English and Turkish are common in the Akan culture. They can thus be said to be peculiar to the English and Turkish cultures. Though Akans do not specify the means, they sometimes talk about the manner in which they wish to be pulled (on a carriage) to the cemetery. The common expression they use is: (12) Sâ CM

me wu a

mo-n-twe

1SG.SUBJ die CM 2PL-OPT-pull

me

nyaa

ISG OBJ

slowly

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

‘When I die, I prefer to be pulled slowly (to the cemetery).’ It is important to note that the idea of being in a carriage is implied in the verb twe ‘pull’. As I have already indicated sometimes Akans attribute the cause of death to a kind of ailment in which case they use the expression, no a-ku no (13) Yareâ disease DEF PERF-kill 3SG OBJ ‘The disease has killed him.’ When Akans conceptualise the departure as a call or an invitation from God, the expressions they use include:

(14) Onyame a-frâ no God PERF-call 3SG-OBJ ‘God has called him.’ (i.e. He is dead.) (15) Onyame a-to ne nsa a-frâ no God PERF-throw 3SGPOSS hand PERF-call 3SG-OBJ ‘God has invited him.’ (i.e. He is dead.) In Akan, death is understood as a departure with no return. Some common expressions in Akan include:

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(16) Asamando yâ-n-kô

yâ-m-ma, anka Hades 1PLSUB-NEG-go 1PL SUB-NEG-come else 1SG. mâ-kô bi FUT SUB-go some

‘A round trip cannot be made to the land of the dead, otherwise I would accompany you.’ (Adu Gyamfi Ampem 1998: 305) (17) Sâ asamando wô amane a anka ôbaatan bi CM hades get parcel CM MM mother INDEF a-mane ne ba. PERF-remit 3SG POSS child ‘If parcels could be sent from the land of the dead, a mother would have remitted her child.’ (Adu Gyamfi Ampem 1998: 1333)

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Esther S. Afreh

If death is departure, then there must be a destination for the departure. In Akan, as in English and Turkish, there are expressions that indicate that the destination is either to God’s house, to the earth, or to the land of the dead. When Akans perceive the destination to be God’s house, the common expressions they use include those in (18) and (19): (18) Ô-kô Onyame 3SG SUBJ-go-COMPL God ‘He has gone to God’s (house).’

nkyân

side

(19) Ô-kô Onyame fie 3SG SUBJ-go-COMPL God house ‘He has gone to God’s house.’ The final destination may also just be to the earth as the following Akan expression implies:

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(20) Asaase biara n-kyiri funu. Soil any NEG-hate corpse ‘No soil rejects a corpse.’ Adu Gyamfi Ampem 1998: 309) The destination may also be the land of the dead. A common expression in Akan is: (21) Ô-kô asamando 3SG SUBJ-go-COMPL the land of the dead/hades ‘He has gone to the land of the dead.’ Akans believe that sometimes the dead go to the land of the ancestors. This belief is different from when the destination is considered to be the land of the dead. Akans revere their ancestors so much. For this reason, Crentsil (2007: 44) describe the ancestors as “revered ghosts” who are accorded “fearful respect” (Mendonsa 1976: 63). This is shown in their title “nananom nsamanfo” (literally, ‘nananom ghosts’). The title “nana” (singular) or “nananom” (plural) is used for people of high status such as chiefs or the elderly. Formerly, the ancestors were people who had jural authority in a lineage or who were heroes (Fortes 1965). However, nowadays anyone who is considered to have had a long and/or a “well44

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Esther S. Afreh

spent life” (Van der Geest 2004: 899) goes to the land of the ancestors or is considered an ancestor. The expression in Akan is (22) Ô-kô nananom asaase 3SG SUBJ-go-COMPL ancestors land ‘He has gone to the land of the ancestors.’

so top

3.3 Death is a loss

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The death is departure metaphor conceptualises death from the perspective of the dead person or the one who departs. However, when the same concept is considered from the perspective of the survivors, and sometimes the dead, another dimension of departure is brought to light. This is the idea of loss. According to Bultnick (1998), the conceptual basis of this mapping lies in the fact that life is perceived as a valuable object, and death as a loss of this possession. The metaphor actually focuses on the negative results of death. The mappings are shown below: Source: Loss Mappings Target: Death Dead person/survivors A one who loses something What the deceased loses A his life What the survivors lose A their valuables Effects of the loss A pain, sadness, loneliness, confusion, etc. When this metaphor is conceptualised from the perspective of the dead, some common expressions Akans use include: (23) Ô-a-hwere ne nkwa 3SG SUBJ-PERF-loose 3SG POSS ‘He has lost his life.’ (i.e. He is dead.)

life

(24) Ô -a-hwere ne kra 3SG SUBJ-PERF-loose 3SG POSS soul ‘He has lost his soul.’ (i.e. He is dead.) On the other hand, when the metaphor is considered from the perspective of the survivors, who correspond to those who lose their valuables, Akans use the expression in (25) for that experience:

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Esther S. Afreh

(25) Ô -a-hwere ne kunu/yere/ba 3SG SUBJ-PERF-loose 3SG POSS husband/wife/child ‘He/she has lost his/her husband/wife/child.’ In Akan a number of expressions indicate the pain and the grief survivors or relations of the deceased experience. Some of the expressions include: (26) Owuo yâ ya. Death do pain ‘Death is painful.’ (27) Nkwa n-yâ dâ a anka owuo nso n-yâ ya life NEG-do sweet CM MM death also NEG-do pain ‘If life were not enjoyable, death would not be painful.’ (Adu Gyamfi Ampem 1998: 847)

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(28) Nkwan n-yâ dâ a anka owuo nso n-yâ ya. soup NEG-do sweet CM MM death also NEG-do pain ‘As food is resuscitating so is death devastating.’ (Adu Gyamfi Ampem 1998: 850) Example (26) indicates that the survivors experience pain. In (27) and (28), the enjoyable nature of food and life is contrasted with the painful effect of death. Another effect of death on the part of survivors is sadness: (29) Owuo de awerâhoô ba Death take sadness come ‘Death brings sadness.’ Sometimes the survivors feel lonely: (30) Owuo na âde baako ba Death FOC 3SG SUBJ-take one come ‘It is death which brings loneliness.’ The event of death sometimes leads to confusion amongst the family of the deceased:

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

(31) Owuo na âde nsâmnsâm ba. Death FOC 3SG SUBJ-take matters come ‘It is death that brings confusion.’ The event of death also leaves the survivors thinking and wondering about a number of things: (32) Owuo na âde adwenedwene ba. Death FOC 3SG SUBJ-take thinking come ‘Death leaves people thinking / wondering.’ The following Turkish expressions from Özçalişkan (2003: 295) also describe the experience of survivors:

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(33) Kkzknk yitirdihi zaman bile, ykkklmkş, çökmüş, fakat gene de yaşamaya devam edecek gücü bulabilmişti içinde. (Bener 1997: 20) ‘Even when he lost his daughter, he was ruined, destroyed, but still was able to find the strength inside him to keep on living.’ (34) Yaşamknkn erken yaşlarknda onu yitirmiş olmaktan dolayk çok derin acklar içindeyim. (Yeni BinyIl, news report, 4 July 2000) ‘I am in very deep pain because of losing him at a young age of his life.’ The conceptual metaphor theory highlights some aspects of that target domain and at the same time hides others aspects. When death is conceptualised as a loss, for example, the positive aspects of death are all hidden. In English, life is generally conceived of in terms of “bodily bondage” (Lakoff and Turner 1989:23), and therefore death is deliverance. Similarly, in Akan life is sometimes conceptualised as a battle or a struggle as the expressions in (35) and (36) indicate: (35) Ôbrá yâ ôkõ Life and war ‘Life is a struggle/a battle.’ (36) Ôbrá ne me re-kõ Life and 1SG-SUBJ PROG-fight ‘I have been engaged in the struggles of life.’ 47

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When life is viewed as such, death, then, becomes a relief from the struggles of life. In Akan, death is also considered as good or as a relief especially when the deceased is known to have suffered so much from a kind of ailment. There is also a common expression in Akan which indicates that sometimes death is preferable: (37) Fâdeâ ne wuo a, Disgrace and death CM ‘Death is preferable to disgrace.’

fanyinam

owuo.

better death

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3.4 Death is a person In Akan death is sometimes personified not in the sense of a ‘summoner’ discussed earlier on, but as a killer, thus giving us the metaphor death is a killer. The basis for this mapping is that a killer brings the life of an organism to an end; a killer destroys life. In English the death as a person metaphor is tied to the metaphor peopl are plants, in which death is conceptualised as a grim reaper. People are ‘harvested’ by the reaper. In Turkish, death as a reaper is an adversary who may either be “an enemy”, “a chaser” or a “wild animal” (Özçalişkan 2003: 305). The mappings for this metaphor are given below: Source: Killer Mappings Target: Death Killer A death Target of crime A people Means of killing A striking them or engaging them in battles A common expression in Akan which actually indicates the wicked nature of death is (38) Owuo a-kum ôbaatan a-gya ne ba Death PERF-kill nursing mother PERF-leave 3SG POSS child ‘Death has killed a nursing mother thereby letting her leave her child alone in the world.’ What makes the choice of the victim ôbaatan ‘a nursing mother’ in the expression effective is that her child, who becomes lonely as a result, has the qualities that appeal to the emotions of sympathisers. If death is a killer, then it has some means of perpetrating the crime. 48

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In Akan, the killer either hits the victim (the deceased or his relations) with a rod or engages them in battles. The use of the rod in this context is quite different from the English version where the killer is a grim reaper who ‘harvests’ people. The expressions in (39) and (40) are commonly used: (39) Owuo de n’abaa a-ba-bô me/no Death take 3SG POSS-stick PERF-come-PERF-beat 1SG OBJ/3SG OBJ ‘Death has hit me/him with its rod.’ (40) Owuo ne yân reko, ôpatafoô ne hwan? Death and 1PL OBJ PROG-fight mediator is who ‘Death has engaged us in battle, who will be our mediator?’ One can either win or lose a battle. However, with regard to this particular battle, Akans believe that death is so strong and too powerful to be defeated. The strong and powerful nature of death is established in the following expressions: (41) Ôdomankoma Creator fa-a

bô-ô

owuo

ma-a

owuo

create-COMPL death give-COMPL death no

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take-COMPL 3SG OBJ ‘The creator created death, yet death overcame him.’ (42) Owuo kura adeâ a nkwa n-tumi Death hold/HAB something CM life NEG-power n-gye

NEG-take ‘When death holds/has something, life cannot wrestle it from him.’ In this sense, death is always considered as the winner of its battles with men, whereas those who die or their relations are considered losers. Dying, then, is losing a contest against an adversary. This idea is part of a more general basic metaphor staying alive is a contest or life is a battle / struggle.

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Metaphors of Death in Akan

Esther S. Afreh

3.5 Death is sleep Our knowledge of the physiological effects of death forms the basis for this metaphor. In the metaphor the corpse corresponds to the body of the sleeper, and the appearance of the corpse—inactive and inattentive—to the appearance of the sleeper. Creatures which are sleeping, like those which are dead, are still and lying down. Moreover, sleeping entities are silent. Akans formulate this conception as: owuo a, hwâ nna (43) Wo-n-nim 2SG SUBJ-NEG-know death CM look sleep ‘If you do not know what death may look like, you can get a clue from sleep.’ (Gyamfi Ampem 1998: 1499) Sympathisers at burials also bid the deceased farewell in expressions like:

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(44) Da yie Sleep well ‘Have a sound sleep.’ (45) Kô da dinn Go sleep quietly ‘Go and sleep quietly.’ However, this kind of sleep, as Lakoff and Turner (1989) have also noted, is one from which the person will not awake; it is an eternal sleep. Aristophanes says in “The Frogs,” For what is Death but an eternal sleep? An interesting expression in Akan about the eternal nature of this sleep is (46) Yâ-bâ-wu nti yâ-nna? 1PL SUBJ-FUT-die so 1PL SUBJ-NEG-sleep ‘Should the fear of death deter us from sleeping?’ This expression means that the eternal nature of the sleep of death should not deter us from sleeping for we will wake up.

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Summary and conclusion The paper has been an attempt to describe the metaphorical structure of the domain of death in Akan, with the goal of showing the coherent conceptual organisation underlying the various expressions about death in Akan and identifying cross-linguistic variation in the types of metaphorical mappings identified by Lakoff and Turner (1989) and Fernándes (2006) for English, as well as those identified by Özçalişkan (2003) for Turkish. The analysis has revealed the following conceptual metaphors of death in Akan: death is departure, death is a loss, death is a person, death is a killer, death is sleep. Analysis of the Akan expressions has revealed that metaphors go beyond pointing to the similarities between entities; rather they stand as a means of organising and understanding reality and that, conceptual metaphors are grounded in the nature of our everyday interaction with the world or our social and bodily experiences. Again, the analysis reveals a high degree of similarity between Akan, English and Turkish in the types of metaphorical mappings. This was not only observed in the primary, but also in the complex metaphorical mappings. A small set of primary metaphors (states are locations or change of state is change of location, body is container and staying alive is a contest provides the basic level structure for the complex metaphors death is departure, death is a loss, death is a person, death is a killer, and death is sleep which had all been identified for English (Lakoff and Turner 1989 and Fernándes 2006) and Turkish (Özçalişkan 2003). This goes to support the claim that primary metaphors are universal and also that conceptual metaphors are grounded in the nature of our everyday interaction in the world. That the similarities in the mappings extend to some of the complex metaphorical mappings is very interesting, especially as they are considered culture-specific. The reason for the similarities could be that the domain under discussion occurs in a similar manner universally as a universal phenomenon, although the causes of its happening may vary. There were, however, a few cross-cultural variations. These were discovered at more detailed aspects of the source domain structure. For example, it was revealed that in Akan death is conceptualised as the soul having left 51

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the world, whereas in Turkish the soul is perceived to have left the human body. Moreover, whereas the means of departure is not specified in Akan, in English and Turkish some means of movement such as by ships, rafts and on horses, considered to be peculiar to the two cultures, are indicated. Again, it was revealed that out of the reverence Akans have for the ancestors, they have a special place for them even in death.

References Ampem, Adu Gyamfi, Agyewodin.1998. Akan Mmebusem Bi. Kumasi: KNUST Press. Bener, Erhan. 1997. Kedi ve ölüm [Cat and death]. Ankara: Ümit YayIncIhk. Bultnick, Bert. 1998. Metaphors We Die By: Conceptualisations of Death in English and their Implications for the Theory of Metaphor. Antwerpen: Universiteit Antwerpen. Crenstil, Perpetual. 2007. Death, Ancestors, and HIV/AIDS Among the Akan of Ghana. Finland: Helsinki University Press. Fernández, Eliecer Crespo. 2006. “The Language of Death: Euphemism and the Conceptual Metaphorization in Victorian Obituaries.” SKY Journal of Linguistics 19: 101-130.

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Fortes, Meyer. 1965. Some Reflections on Ancestor Worship in Africa. In African Systems of Thought. Meyer Fortes and G. Dieterlen (Eds.) London: Oxford University Press. Grady, Joseph. 1997 Foundations of Meaning. Primary metaphors and Primary Scenes. Doctoral thesis, Linguistics Dept, University of California, Berkeley. UMI Dissertation services: . Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George. 1993. The contemporary theory of metaphor. In Metaphor and Thought, second edition. A. Ortony (Ed.) Cambridge University Press, pp. 202-51. Lakoff, George. & Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.

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Lakoff, George and Turner, Mark. 1989. More than Cool Reason A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. University of Chicago Press. Mendonsa, Eugene. 1976. Elders, Office Holders and Ancestors among the Sisala of Northern Ghana. Africa 46 (1): 57-65. Osam, Kweku. 2004. The Trondheim Lectures: An introduction to the structure of Akan: its Verbal and Multiverbal Systems. Legon: Department of Linguistics. Özçalişkan, Ş. 2003. In a caravanserai with two doors I am walking day and night: Metaphors of death and life in Turkish. Cognitive Linguistics (14-4): 81-320. Sarpong, Peter. 1977. Girls’ Nubility Rites in Ashanti. Tema, Ghana: Ghana Publishing Corporation. Rohrer, Tim. 2006. Three Dogmas of Embodiment: Cognitive Linguistics as a Cognitive Science. In Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Applications René Dirven, Gitte Kristiansen and Michael Achard (Eds.) Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 119-146. Van der Geest, Sjaak. 2004. Dying Peacefully: Considering Good and Bad Death in Kwahu-Tafo, Ghana. Social Science and Medicine 58 (5): 899-911.

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Abbreviations 1 2 3 COMPL CM DEF INDEF HAB MM NEG OBJ OPT PERF PLU POSS PROG SG SUBJ

First person Second person Third person Completive Conditional marker Definite article Indefinite article Habitual Modal marker Negation Object Optative Perfect Plural Possessive Progressive Singular Subject 53

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Political Nicknaming in Ghana: Social Representations of Democracy Achieved through Conceptual Blending Gladys Nyarko Ansah This paper analyses meaning construction in Ghanaian political discourse. Under the general cognitive linguistic assumption that meaning is constructed in the minds of language users who use linguistic units as prompts to construct meaningful conceptual representations, the paper employs the Conceptual Blending Theory framework to analyse four political lexical terminologies: ‘Ellembele Mugabe’, ‘Lawra Nandom Kabila’, ‘World Bank’, and ‘Rural Bank’—political lexical terminologies that emerged during the 2008 general elections in Ghana. The analysis shows that conceptual blending is a key sociocognitive process in creating social representations about democracy in Ghana by bringing rich inferences from both local and international political contexts into Ghanaian political discourse.

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Introduction and background Before British colonial rule, Africa was divided into several independent states, some highly developed or sophisticated in the area of politics, religion and socio-economic life (Ward 1967). Ancient Ghana and Mali empires may be cited as examples of such pre-colonial kingdoms/ empires with highly sophisticated systems of political administration in Africa. The pre-colonial picture of modern day Ghana was not any different. For example, the Bono, Asante, Denkyira and Akwamu kingdoms/states were highly developed pre-colonised African states. These empires had systems of government where the empire/kingdom or state was governed by monarchs. According to Ward (1967), during the British Colonial rule in Africa, the British believed that traditional African 54

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states would gradually develop into efficient organs of local government which would in turn pave the way for the growth of a sense of nationality and the capacity to run a national government. Like many modern African nations, the modern nation state Ghana is constituted by remnants of several pre-colonial states (with their own sophisticated systems of political governance) whose cultures have survived colonial rule. This notwithstanding, indeed, there has been a growth of a sense of nationality with a national government in place. This has resulted in the development of new political and social structures (including democratic rule) which are perceived as attempts at modernity: establishing a new modern order of a new society. Modernity, among other things, implies the ability of a society to absorb changes beyond its own initial institutional premise. These changes may include conceptual shift or conceptual change, which in turn may call for the ability to elaborate and expand vocabulary to cater for any new concepts that may arise in the process. Ghana’s fourth republic is the longest democratic dispensation since Ghana’s independence in 1957. What new concepts have evolved with this new culture (democratic rule and the processes that come along with it)? How do political jargons that have emerged during Ghana’s fourth republic inform us about aspects of conceptualisation about democracy in Ghana? What socio-cognitive processes are employed in coping with this new culture? This paper examines conceptual blending as a major socio-cognitive process that is employed in creating social representations about aspects of democracy in Ghana. The paper does a blending analysis of four political novel lexical items that emerged during the December 2008 general elections.

1. Political discourse and social cognition This section reviews some key literature on the relationship between language and politics, as well as the relationship between (political) discourse and social cognition. The role of language in politics has been established since the rhetoric tradition. However, while in the past political theory tended to treat the language aspect of politics as peripheral, in more recent times, there is a lot of research (Chilton 2004, Van 55

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Dijk 1990, Lakoff 1997) that has emphasised the central role language plays in politics. Research in this direction has particularly stressed the important role language plays in social/political cognition (shared beliefs about what is good or bad, and what is just or unjust in a socio-political group). In rhetoric, Aristotle identified two functions of language that connect language directly to politics. Firstly, he argued that language has the function of indicating to a speech community what is harmful or useful. Secondly, language has the function of indicating what is good and evil, just and unjust. Chilton (2004) formulates a cognitive approach to political discourse by reviewing existing theories such as Chomsky’s (1957) generative linguistics, Grice’s (1975) cooperative principle and Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory. Chilton’s main thesis is that while language and social practice are closely intertwined, human linguistic and social abilities are not a straightjacket. Instead, language is linked to the human cognitive ability to engage in free critique and criticism. In other words, language and politics are linked because both are based on the cognitive endowments of the human mind rather than social practices. Thus he draws on cognitive linguistic theories of metaphor and representation to link language and politics. He therefore argues for studying political discourse from a linguistic perspective on the basis that, in principle, political discourse involves using language to negotiate representations (states of affairs in the world). Chilton (2004) redefines Aristotle’s first function of language in terms of a ‘reciprocal altruism’ (communicative cooperation in Grice’s 1975 terms) and suggests that Aristotle’s second function of language indicates that humans have conceptions/institutions of morality (good or bad, just or unjust), and that producing and sharing of a common view regarding these concepts is an intrinsic part of or basis for constituting a socio-political group. Chilton’s conclusion is that if the central business of politics is the attempt to get others to share a common view about what is harmful or useful, good or evil, and just or unjust, and language is the main vehicle for producing or expressing such concepts, then language is intrinsically linked to politics. Chilton again draws on the Speech Act theory (Austin 1962) to link language and politics by equating political action to language action (speech acts). He argues 56

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that political actions such as coercion, legitimisation/delegitimisation, and representation/mis-representation, persuasion (all of which are attempts at cooperation- getting others to share a common moral view) are achieved through language actions (strategic use of language). Other cognitive approaches to political discourse (Van Dijk 1990; Lakoff 1997), also consider political discourse as necessarily a product of mental processes or social cognition (individual or collective). Van Dijk (1990) for instance emphasises the important role that discourse plays in social representations (SRs) as well as the interplay between discourse and social cognition. Discussing social cognition in terms of “shared social representations of group members,” Van Dijk (1990: 166) defines social cognition as “a socially shared system of SRs, a system which, however, also includes a set of strategies for their effective manipulation in social interpretation, interaction and discourse.” Such approaches dovetail with schema-theoretic orientations, generally claiming that knowledge of politics, political discourse and political ideologies involves storage in long-term memory (semantic, personal, and social), and that such long-term stored knowledge forms schemata that become available for the on-line processing of producing and understanding the content and context of future political discourse. These social cognition theories (for example, Van Dijk 1990) also emphasise the role of language in creating social cognition by asserting that social representations (which embody evaluative information such as opinions about other people or group members), for example, stereotyping/ethnic prejudices, are socially shared knowledge reproduced in society through discourse. In other words, social representations are largely acquired, used and changed through text and talk (Van Dijk 1990:165).

2. Language in meaning construction This section presents a brief discussion of the role language plays in meaning construction. Several theories have been propounded to account for or establish the relationship between language and meaning. Many of these theories have failed to provide an adequate account of this relationship, and new theories have sprung up as an attempt to account for one inadequacy or another of an existing theory. For instance, cognitive 57

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semanticists (Lakoff and Johnson 1997; Fauconnier and Turner 2002) criticise formal theories of meaning, arguing that such approaches to the study of meaning assume objectivist or positivist positions. Indeed, the early objectivist or logical positivist approaches to the study of meaning ignored issues of language acquisition and cognitive significance, emphasising referential meaning. In these approaches a proper name, for example, is believed to have a rigid, context independent meaning. In other words, meaning was regarded as entirely dependent on reference (a context independent referent); the linguistic elements were seen as arbitrary, making no contribution to the sense or meaning they carry. Other traditional approaches to the study of meaning, for example componential analysis, have tended to treat meaning as residing in the linguistic units or forms that constitute them. These views of meaning have been challenged by cognitive linguists in general and constructionist theorists in particular. The next sub-section discusses the cognitive linguistics position with regards to the role language plays in meaning.

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2.1. Meaning creation in cognitive semantics Cognitive linguists unanimously agree that meaning does not reside in linguistic units. Instead, they assert that meaning is constructed in the minds of language users who use linguistic units as prompts to construct meaningful conceptual representations. Cognitive linguists indeed claim that “we think and experience the world in terms of scenarios” (Radden et al 2007: 9) and that linguistic units serve as prompts for accessing these scenarios. In other words, meaning is believed to be constructed in the minds of language users who use linguistic units as tools for the construction of meaning. This, they argue, accounts for the creative use of language among language users. For instance, Francis (2000) observes that semantic extensions arise from the creative uses of language which give rise to semantic processes such as: semantic extension—the process through which the sense or meaning of a linguistic form becomes applicable in other contexts. Semantic extension occurs in many ways including: generalisation, specialisation and euphemism. Generalisation, also known as semantic 58

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widening or broadening, is the process whereby the meaning of a lexeme is extended to be more general while maintaining a link between the original meaning and the new meaning. For example, the word foot as in the foot of a mountain is metaphorically linked to the part of the human body part foot because they both refer to the base of the larger entity of which they are a part. Another process of semantic extension is specialisation, also known as semantic narrowing, which is the semantic process through which the meaning of a word or lexeme becomes less general and more specific. For example, the meaning of the English word ‘bread’ has moved from the generic sense of food to a more specific meaning of a particular type of food, typically made by mixing flour, water and yeast, and baking it. Euphemism, replacing an unpleasant word with a more pleasant or less offensive one, is another semantic process by which meaning creation may occur. Francis (2000) considers euphemism as resulting from the semantic extension of a relatively neutral word to an unpleasant or taboo word; suggesting that generally euphemism is a politeness strategy, an indirection, which enables language users to talk about forbidden topics, and to avoid hurting others’ feelings; embarrassment or direct confrontation of authority respectively. Radden et al (2007) have identified conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy, conceptual blending, and iconicity, which allow us to think and experience reality by making inferences, as major guiding principles in meaning construction. In other words, these guiding principles which are cognitive operations enable us to make inferences from the scenarios that linguistic units evoke in order to construct meaning or decode constructed meaning. Thus, whereas objectivists’ approaches to meaning studies are referential, cognitive approaches to meaning studies are representational.

2.1.1. Metaphor in meaning construction Cognitive linguists identify metaphor and categorisation as two major schemes of human cognition. For example, the assumption in cognitive linguistics that we think and experience reality in scenarios involves metaphorisation (understanding one thing in terms of another). The conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) was proposed by Lakoff and 59

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Johnson (1980) to account for this new way of looking at meaning in language. In CMT, one domain (target domain) is understood in terms of another (source) domain through a one-to-one projection of mapped elements in the two domains, where the target domain preserves the topology of the source domain.1 In other words, all the elements of the source domain get projected unto all the elements in the target domain. For instance, in English, Kövecses (2002: 8) identifies the following systematic conceptual mappings between elements in the source domain ‘plants’ and target domain ‘social organisation’. Source: PLANT Target: SOCIAL ORGANISATION (a) The whole plant A the entire organisation (b) A part of the plant A a part of the organisation (c) Growth of the plant A development of the organisation (d) Removing a part of A reducing the organisation the plant (e) The root of the plant A the origin of the organisation (f ) The flowering A the best stage, the most successful stage (g) The fruit or crops A the beneficial consequences Brdar and Brdar-Szabo (2007) have studied the use of figuratively used personal names. Their study shows that the online construction of figurative meaning involves tiers of metonymic and metaphoric mappings. Even though CMT proved to be very useful in accounting for meaning, it was not adequate in accounting for the dynamic aspects of meaning creation such as are found in novel metaphors and counterfactuals. Thus, Turner and Fauconnier (1995) proposed the conceptual blending theory (CBT) to account for the role of language in meaning construction, particularly, the dynamic aspects of meaning construction. 1

Conceptual mappings are claimed to be motivated rather than predicted. In other words, conceptual mappings are not based on any pre-existing similarities between source and target domains. Instead, the mappings are motivated by either experiential correlation in physical experience such as that between increase in volume and increase in height, Lakoff and Johnson (1980), or a perceived structural similarity between source and target domains, as has been shown in the organisations are plants metaphor shown above.

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3. Conceptual blending theory—an overview This section presents a brief overview of the conceptual blending theory. Turner and Fauconnier (1995) observed that the construction of novel meanings or metaphors usually involves the emergence of a new structure that inherits only a partial structure from the two or more domains, and additional structure from neither of the input spaces. Their ever popular example was ‘this surgeon is a butcher’. As they argue, our understanding of the sentence to mean the surgeon is incompetent does not arise from our knowledge of a butcher or a surgeon in terms of their expertise in what they do. Indeed, both professionals are experts in what they do. So from where does this understanding derive? Since CMT could not account for the emergent structure in creative meaning construction, Turner and Fauconnier (1995) proposed the many space model, the conceptual blending theory (CBT), also known as blending theory to account for the dynamic aspects of meaning construction such as novel metaphors. The blending theory derives from CMT and mental space theory in that, like CMT it espouses the belief that meaning construction occurs at the conceptual level. However, it is close to the mental space theory in terms of architecture and its central concern. Like the mental space theory, CBT proposes mental spaces rather than conceptual domains. Whereas a conceptual domain is a relatively complex knowledge structure which relates to a coherent aspect of experience (Evans 2007: 61), a mental space is a specific kind of conceptual space whose construction is based on general linguistic, pragmatic, and cultural strategies for recruiting information (Evans 2007: 134). Again, the major concern of mental space theory is to deal with dynamic aspects of meaning construction. This notwithstanding, CBT is different from both CMT and mental space theory. According to Evans and Green (2006: 400) “the crucial insight of Blending Theory is that meaning construction typically involves integration of structure that gives rise to more than the sum of its parts.” The assertion here is that this process of conceptual blending or integration is a basic cognitive process that plays a central role in the way we think. Blending prompts for conceptual integration, usually in on-line meaning construction—where “the understanderer must both 61

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access much larger ranges of conceptual structure and imaginatively discover productive ways of integrating them into a relevant scenario” (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 6).

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3.1. The nature of blending Elements in blending consist of two or more mental spaces, and a generic space, which allows for the establishment of counterpart connections between the input spaces and a blended space, the emergent structure. In CBT elements from input spaces are selectively projected into a blended space. This means the target domain does not preserve the topology of input spaces (not all elements in the input spaces get projected unto the blended space). The emergent structure is a result of selective projection. Selective projection is flexible and necessary for local understanding, allowing for different blends to emerge from the same input spaces. Blending occurs not only at the conceptual level but also across and between grammatical forms. In formal blends, for example compounding, the input spaces relate to the grammatical forms with selective lexical concepts that are conventionally associated with the forms. The blended space in formal blends, therefore, contains word projection and selective linguistic concepts from the input spaces. Blending involves three processes: (1) composition, which projects roles and values from input spaces; (2) completion, which draws inferences from background frames; and (3) elaboration, which processes the blend on-line. Scenarios are important sources of information in meaning construction because they tend to be culture specific - shared by a group of people who share common experiences and reality, suggesting that meaning construction relies on cultural background knowledge. In other words, it is important to note that while meaning construction or creation involves making inferences from the scenarios which linguistic units invoke, certain factors may constrain the potential range of inferences that can be made in any particular context of meaning construction. These factors include: (i) the linguistic units that serve as prompts to evoking scenarios; (ii) the context and situation of discourse/communication; 62

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(iii) the encyclopaedic knowledge of the interlocutors; (iv) personal affective factors of interlocutors. (Radden et al 2007:10)

3.2. The blending analysis In this section, the four selected novel lexical items that emerged during Ghana’s December 2008 general elections are analysed in the Conceptual Blending Analysis framework.

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3.2.1. Ellembele Mugabe. The political jargon Ellembele Mugabe is constituted by two proper names denoting a specific geographic location and a specific human being respectively. The term referred to Mr. Freddie Blay, the then sitting MP of Ellembele, one of Ghana’s 230 electoral constituencies. Mr Blay had been a member of parliament for the Ellembele constituency since 1996 on the ticket of the Convention People’s Party (CPP). Even though his own political party has always been in opposition throughout the Fourth Republic (since 1992), Mr. Blay was the second deputy speaker of parliament from 1997 to 2000, after which he was made the first deputy speaker of Parliament in 2001. This occurred after his party went into the Great Alliance with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 2000, which alliance saw the overthrow of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the coming into power of the NPP. Since then, Mr Blay’s loyalty to his own party, the CPP, was questioned by many Ghanaians. This notwithstanding, he was allowed to re-contest his seat on the ticket of the CPP in 2004, winning his seat in the process. Again, in 2008 Mr. Blay was duly elected on 23rd August 2008 to contest as the CPP’s parliamentary candidate for the Ellembele constituency. Upon his election, Mr. Blay openly declared his support for the NPP presidential candidate. This made him very unpopular not only in his party but in many quarters, particularly, his constituency. At this point, the CPP sought to throw him out of the party. On August 28th 2008, the central committee of the CPP nullified the parliamentary primary in the Ellembele constituency which had elected him as the party’s parliamentary candidate for the constituency in the December 63

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2008 general elections. In reaction to the annulment of his candidacy and together with other CPP members, Mr. Blay filed a writ on 5th September 2008 at an Accra Fast Track High Court, seeking a declaration to uphold the primaries that elected him to run as MP for the Ellembele constituency on the party’s ticket. Mr. Blay won the court case and run for MP at Ellembele on the ticket of the CPP. However, he lost his seat in the December 7th general election. It was after Mr. Blay won the court case against his party that the name ‘Ellembele Mugabe’ emerged in Ghanaian political discourse. For instance, on October 29th 2008, The Ghanaian Chronicle carried the following headline: ‘NDC declares war on Freddie Blay and says ELLEMBELLE `MUGABE` MUST GO’. Geog. Location Political Unit Political Leader Name of Leader Ellembele

Zimbabwe

EC

Dem. Country

MP

President

F. Blay

Robert Mugabe

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Ellembele Freddie Blay’s controversial political life/career

Mugabe Elec. Const. MP

Mugabe’s controversial political life/career

Blended space Fig. 1: The Ellembele Mugabe blend

In the blending process, the two input spaces project roles and values from the generic space. Then the elements in the two input spaces are systematically mapped. This is the composition stage. However, not all elements in each input spaces get projected into the blended space. Only 64

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a few selected elements from each input space get projected into the blended space so that Ellembele Mugabe is not the president of a democratic country called Zimbabwe but an MP of an electoral constituency, Ellembele in the Western region of Ghana. At the completion stage, the blend draws inferences from two background frames, Mugabe’s political career and Freddie Blay’s political career. Our ability to interpret this blend depends on the inferences we can draw from our encyclopaedic knowledge about African politics and practices of some African political leaders. Indeed, the ability to understand and correctly interpret the blend depends upon one’s ability to draw the correct inferences from encyclopaedic knowledge about the political careers of both Robert Mugabe and Freddie Blay. As the blending process shows, Mr. Blay was an MP, not a president, a Ghanaian, not Zimbabwean etc. So what is it about Mr. Blay that makes him a Mugabe? Robert Mugabe joined politics while still at the University, so did Blay. Mugabe is a lawyer, so is Blay. Mugabe belonged to a political party that was key in the struggle against British rule, so did Blay (CPP). Mugabe’s party went into alliance with another party to fight the Rhodesia government; Blay’s CPP joined the Great Alliance to fight and dislodge the NDC government. Mugabe had won elections since 1980. When he was pressurised to resign in 2008, he objected vehemently. Freddie Blay had won parliamentary elections since 1996, and he also vehemently objected to the pressure on him to resign in 2008. However, Mr Blay does not have any records of sacking white farmers from his constituency, nor any history of victimising/torturing his political opponents as does Robert Mugabe. Thus, selective projection does not take place only at the composition stage of the blending but also at the completion stage.

3.2.2. Lawra Nandom Kabila. Like the Ellembele Mugabe blend, this blend integrates two conceptual spaces that are proper nouns, representing a specific geographic location and a specific individual human being into a single conceptual space that represent a unique individual. The term was used to refer to Dr. Benjamin Kumbuor, the then NDC member of parliament for the Lawra-Nandom constituency in the Upper West Region of Ghana. 65

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Dr. Kumbuor had been a member of parliament in the constituency since 2000. In 2004 when his party was in opposition, he contested fiercely against a leading member of the ruling NPP, Ambrose Dery, for his seat and won. In 2008, by which time Ambrose Dery had had opportunity to serve as minister of Justice and Attorney General, as well as the Upper west Regional minister, many NPP members and sympathizers began to agitate that Mr Dery presented better credentials to unseat Dr. Kumbuor. The general impression at the time was that Dr. Kumbuor was a strong politician and a force to contend with if one considered unseating him. It was around this time that the term Lawra-Nandom Kabila emerged to describe him.

Geog. Location Political Unit Political Leader

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Name of Leader L. Nandom

DR Congo

Elec. Const.

Dem. Country

MP

President

Kumbour

Kabila

LN. Kabila Kumbour as a force to contend with in Ghanaian Politics

Elec. Const. MP Blended space

Fig. 2: Lawra Nandom Kabila blend

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Kabila as a force to contend with in DR Congo’s Politics

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Political Nicknaming in Ghana:

Gladys Nyarko Ansah

In this blend, the process of composition selectively projects elements from the two input spaces into the blended space. Whereas all the elements in input space one are projected into the blend, only one element (the name Kabila) is projected from the second input space into the blended space. Thus, the blended space contains a unique structure, a representation of a person with a unique identity. From input space two, we know Kabila is the name of a political leader, a president of DR Congo. However, in the blend, the new Kabila is a political leader, not of a country but a fraction of the country Ghana (an MP but not a president). Again, like the Ellembele Mugabe blend, the completion process requires one to enlist his/her encyclopaedic knowledge about political career of both Laurent-Desire Kabila and Benjamin Kumbuor to be able to correctly interpret the blend. Laurent Kabila began his political carrier as a deputy commander of a youth wing of an opposition party in 1960. He was then appointed to the provincial assembly for North Katanga (equivalent of an electoral constituent in the north of Ghana?). He belonged to a Marxist/socialist tradition of politics, became a rebel leader, and helped organise a revolution. He became a president through a rebel activity in 1997. His former allies turned against him, betrayed him and were responsible for the coup attempt that crashed him in 2001. Unlike Kabila, Kumbuor has never been a rebel leader, a president, nor has he ever led a revolution or been assassinated. However, like Kabila, Kumbuor belongs to a political party with a socialist orientation. His party evolved from a regime that organised a revolution in the 1980s. He had been elected MP of a constituency in northern Ghana, equivalent to a commander in a northern province. Above all, like Kabila, he has proved to be a force to contend with in politics.

3.2.3. World Bank The term was used in Ghana’s political discourse to represent a political party’s stronghold—a particular political/geographic location where a particular political party receives massive support that translates into votes during an election. For example, in a pre-election interview with the BBC’s David Amanor in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital, the interviewees indicated their understanding of this term thus: ‘a strong67

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Political Nicknaming in Ghana:

Gladys Nyarko Ansah

hold of a party; a major support base of a party; a massive support base for a party’. This blend is quite different from the two previous ones in the sense that this blend is composed of two common nouns, with one acting as a modifier. Organization Activities Beneficiary

input 1

Electoral area

The World Bank

Provides votes

Provides funds

Politicians

Nation states

input 2

World Bank Electoral area Provides votes Politicians

The nature, mission and activities of the World Bank

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Blended space Fig. 3: The World Bank blend

In the composition stage, the generic space provides roles and values to the input spaces, making it possible for mapping of roles between the two input spaces with mapping between the following elements: electoral area in input space 1 is mapped to the role of The World Bank in input space 2; the role of politicians is mapped unto the role of nation states, while the value of providing votes in input space 1 is mapped unto providing funds/aids in the second input space. Selected elements from the two input spaces are then projected into the blended space. 68

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Political Nicknaming in Ghana:

Gladys Nyarko Ansah

At the completion stage, inferences are drawn from background knowledge about the World Bank and its operations, especially with regard to governments in so called developing countries. The World Bank and sister organisations, for example the International Monetary Fund (IMF), provide substantial funding in terms of loans, aids and grants to support developing economies around the world. As a developing country, Ghana’s government has always depended on international aids, grants and loans to run its annual budget, and many a time this is made plain in government budget when it is presented to the public. As a result, the Ghanaian community is aware of the massive financial support Ghana receives from these bodies for its economy to run. This is the major inference that informs the blend. However, quite often, this funding comes with conditionalities, many of which affect the lives of ordinary citizens negatively. For instance, the Structural Adjustment Programme, which compelled the Ghana government to lay hundreds of workers off in the 1980s was a World Bank/IMF conditionality. Thus ‘World Bank’ also invokes some negative connotations. For instance, two regions (Asante and Volta) are generally accepted as the ‘World Banks’ for the NPP and NDC respectively because of the voting patterns established over the years. Very often in political debates voters from these two regions have generally been accused of not voting according to issues and that irrespective of the abilities or personalities of the individual politicians put forward by their respective parties, they will provide massive support. While this may help bring their parties into power, just as the World Bank/IMF loans and grants help central government to run its budget, such massive support puts the politicians’ interests ahead of that of the entire citizenry. Thus a ‘World Bank’ in Ghanaian political discourse represents any electoral constituency that provides massive, blanket support (which translates into votes) for a particular party without much worry about whether or not that support is in the best interests of the entire nation.

3.2.4. Rural Bank Obviously coined on similar socio-cognitive principles, this term was used in Ghana’s political discourse to represent a political party’s stronghold—a particular political geographic location where a particu69

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Political Nicknaming in Ghana:

Gladys Nyarko Ansah

lar political party receives massive support which translates into votes during an election. Specifically, a rural bank represents a rural support base for a particular political party. However, the grass roots support in this case is not as massive as is found in ‘world banks’. This is because populations in rural Ghana tend to be lower than populations in urban/ peri urban Ghana. In the BBC’s David Amanor’s pre-election interview in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital, this is how some interviewees indicated their understanding of this term: ‘a massive support base for a party in a rural area; a major support area of a political party’. Organization Activities Beneficiary

input 1

Electoral area

Rural Bank

Provides votes

Provides funds

Politicians

Minor sector projects

input 2

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Electoral area Provides votes Politicians

The nature, mission and activities of the rural banks

Blended space Fig. 4: The Rural Bank blend

In this blend, composition ensures that elements in the two input spaces are mapped, where the roles of electoral area maps unto a rural bank, votes unto funds and politicians unto minor sector projects. In the completion process, inferences are drawn from the Ghanaian ency70

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Gladys Nyarko Ansah

clopaedic knowledge about the nature, mission and activities of rural banks. Usually, rural banks provide financial support to small scale businesses and subsistence farmers who are not able to meet the conditions commercial/corporate banks require to grant big loans. The most important feature about rural banks in Ghana is that by virtue of the customers they attract (customers who tend not to have any large investments), the rural banks themselves have limited resources (compared to commercial/corporate banks). As a result, even though they provide ‘massive support’ to their customers, their massive support is relatively minute compared to the kind of massive support the Ghana government receives from the World Bank or IMF. Thus the support rural banks provide to their customers is smaller relative to the support Ghana receives from the World Bank/IMF. Indeed, as a developing nation with more rural communities than urban/peri urban, Ghana’s local economy is supported by subsistence farming and other small and medium scale business. Thus, the support is considered as equally important, although different.

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Conclusion: conceptual blending in social cognition This paper has discussed the role of conceptual blending as a socio-cognitive process in Ghanaian political discourse. This concluding section presents some observations and general remarks. From the analysis of the four lexical items, the following observations were made. In the first place, the study confirms the cognitive linguistics position that meaning is constructed – language users employ linguistic units to create socially meaningful representations. For example, while the creation of the four items involves the combination of linguistic items: (proper) nouns—Ellembele, Mugabe, Kabila Lawra Nandom; (proper) nouns and adjectives/adjectivals—World Bank, rural bank; the combination of these lexical items/concepts does not result in the integration of the entire individual concepts; the emergent structures result from the integration of different pieces of information from each conceptual/mental spaces in addition to rich inferences from our encyclopaedic knowledge. Thus, the emergent structure is unique, different from each of the input spaces, and tells a story (Evans and Green 2006). 71

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In the second place, the paper corroborates Brdar and Brdar-Szabo’s (2007) argument that the meanings of proper names are not rigidly fixed in advance and independent of the context of language use as the first denotative theories of meaning proposed. Denotative theories of meaning that emphasised reference posited that proper names have limited applicability—specific or fixed referents. However, based on a cognitive linguistic study of the construction of metonymic and metaphoric meanings of proper nouns that denote humans, Brdar and Brdar-Szabo (2007) conclude that we are able to extend the applicability of the referents of proper names by enlisting our total encyclopaedic knowledge and organising them through metaphor and metonymy. The current paper has also shown that we may equally extend the applicability of the referents of proper names through conceptual blending/integration.

References Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press. Brdar, M. and R. Brdar-Szabo. 2007. When Zidane is not simply Zidane, and Bill Gates is not just Bill Gates: some thoughts on the construction of metaphtonymic meanings of proper names. In Aspects of Meaning Construction. G. Radden, K-M. Kopcke, T. Berg and P. Siemund (Eds.) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Chilton, P. 2004. Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.

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Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Evans, V. and M. Green. 2006. Cognitive Linguistics. Edinburgh University Press. Evans, V. 2007. A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics. University of Edinburgh Press. Fauconnier, G. and M. Turner. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books. Grice, H.P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics. Volume 3. P. Cole and J. Morgan (Eds.) New York: Academic Press, pp. 41-58. Kövecses, Z. 2002. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press Lakoff, G. 1997. Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t. Chicago University Press

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Lakoff, George and M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Radden, G., K-M. Kopcke, T. Berg and P. Siemund (Eds.) 2007. Aspects of Meaning Construction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sperber, D. and D. Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, M. and G. Fauconnier. 1995. ‘Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression’. In M. Johnson (ed.) Journal of Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10.3: 183-203. Van Dijk, T. 1990. Social Cognition and Discourse. In Handbook of Language and Social Psychology. H. Giles and W.P. Robinson (Eds.) New York: John Wiley. Ward, W. E. 1967. Emergent Africa. London: George Allen& Unwin.

Internet references http://www.answers.com/topic/robert-mugabe h t t p : / / w w w. b b c . c o . u k / m e d i a s e l e c t o r / c h e c k / w o r l d s e r v i c e / m e t a / dps/2008/12/081201_ghana_ amanor_street_terms?nbram=1&nbwm=1&bb ram=1&bbwm=1&size=au&lang=en- ws&bgc=003399&ls=42415 http://www.bicusa.or/en/institutions.5.aspx http://www.ghanaian-chronicle.com/thestory.asp?ID=9834 http://www.ghanaianchronicle.com/thestory.asp?id=9088&title=NDC+declare s+war+on+ Freddie+Blay+and+says http://news.myjoyonline.com/elections/200810/ http://www.hku.hk/english/courses2000/1007/1007vocab.htm E. Francis. 2000. Words and meaning. Lecture notes 5-6.

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http://news.myjoyonline.com/politics/200808/19942.asp h t t p : / / w w w. t h e s t a t e s m a n o n l i n e . c o m / p a g e s / p a g e s / a u t h o r _ s t o r i e s . php?auth=HamzaLolly http://news.thinkghana.com/politics/200808/21749.php http://news.thinkghana.com/politics/200808/21677.php http://news.thinkghana.com/politics/200808/21653.php http://whoswhosa.co.za/pages/profileedit.aspx?InID=news http://wikianswers.com

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Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

“Do not Rob us of Ourselves” Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

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As European colonialism in the Gold Coast was being consolidated, the African nationalists reacted by expressing their desire to regain independence. As a first step, there was the desire to assert and affirm the dignity and worth of the African and things African. This was most evident in the quest for a return to the use of Ghanaian languages which had literally been abandoned in favour of European languages, especially English after 1874. This paper aims at utilizing the writings of some of the early Gold Coast intellectuals, especially Reverends Anaman and Acquaah and Mr. Kobina Sekyi, to examine Gold Coast responses to colonialism, the relationship between language and nationalism, and the passionate arguments of coastal intellectuals and nationalists that their entire identity would be lost if they lost their languages to English. It will also examine roles they played in the development of local languages, especially Fante and Nzema, something that is sometimes overlooked.

Introduction The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, to show that colonial Ghanaians initially uncritically mimicked European lifestyles after European intrusion into Africa and that the unbridled adoption of European languages, clothing and cultural norms were some of the ways in which this was manifested. However, upon consolidation of colonialism, and after being edged out in the competition for colonial resources and recognition, early Ghanaian nationalists asserted their Ghanaian roots and urged their countrymen to adopt Ghanaian languages as one of the strategies and, indeed, basis for creating the Ghanaian nation. 74

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Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

The second is to provide glimpses of the historical antecedents of the debate on the utility of Ghanaian languages or English as the language of instruction in basic schools and to argue that the debate is not new; early Ghanaian nationalist intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had debated the point in favour of Ghanaian languages. In doing this, we will utilize the enormous writings of some of the early Ghanaian intellectuals, especially those of Reverends Jacob Anaman, Gaddiel Acquaah and Mr. Kobina Sekyi, to examine early Ghanaian responses to colonialism; the relationship between language and nationalism and the passionate arguments of coastal colonial Ghanaian intellectuals and nationalists that their entire identity would be lost if they lost their languages to English. It is important to point out at the outset that in 1902, ‘Gold Coast’ was applied to the geographical region that became independent from British colonial rule in 1957. However, until 1902, the Gold Coast Colony applied only to the coastal areas of British spheres of influence south of River Pra. This paper is concerned mainly with the activities of nationalist intellectuals in the geographical area covered in pre-1902 Gold Coast, even though the issues they dealt with applied to the whole of colonial Ghana. For this reason, Gold Coast and colonial Ghana would be used interchangeably in this paper. There is good basis for relying on ideas espoused by early Ghanaian nationalist intellectuals in a somewhat small and narrow geographical area as being generally applicable to the whole of colonial Ghana. According to a perceptive early student of nationalism in Africa, Hodgkin (1951), “colonial nations were made not born;” colonial nations were, in reality, amalgams of different nationalities brought together by the force of arms. The colonial political boundary of Ghana did not coincide with Ghanaian linguistic boundaries; there was therefore no national language in colonial Ghana. Nationalism, therefore, assumed local peculiarities which, it was hoped, would extend to the entire country. Clearly then, a study of the evolution of Ghanaian nationalism and national consciousness must necessarily take account of local, provincial and regional representations or expressions of the nationalist ideal. In colonial Ghana, as in many parts of the colonial world, evolution of nationalism and national consciousness found expression in deliberate revival of local “national” cultures, institutions and history. 75

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Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

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1. Initial Gold Coast reaction to European entry into Africa The revolution initiated by the independence of the Gold Coast provoked an equally radical revolution in African historical studies. Africanist scholars placed European entry into and exit from Africa and African reaction to European colonialism under close academic searchlight and highlighted the major milestones in the colonial encounter. Their studies focused, in the main, on European initiatives in Africa under colonialism, and European exit from Africa and highlighted only the roles played by the African “big men and politicians” in the processes. Until very recently, very little attention was paid to the nuanced African initiatives and to currents that underpinned African reaction to colonialism and African nationalism. Africans were not passive recipients of colonial ideas; they played major roles in negotiating the colonial encounter and it is the corpus of European and African initiatives that give true texture and meaning to the colonial encounter. Even though African independence came at the time when none expected it, it was neither a gratuitous gift from Europe nor was it cataclysmic. The struggle for African independence literally began from the period of European conquest. A study of nationalism and independence in Africa must therefore be done with a sense of distant beginnings. In the early period of European contact with Africa, Europe had an urgent need for African ‘assistants’ and ‘collaborators’ to achieve their aims of trade and economic exploitation. Formal western education provided mainly by European missionaries facilitated the availability of African intermediaries and diplomats in the European commercial enterprise in Africa. In colonial Ghana, the coastal region from Keta in the east to Axim and Dixcove in the west, extending inland to the Akwapim hills in the east and River Pra in the west, came heavily under European influence; the Danes and the Swiss established themselves to the east, the British and Dutch to the west. Colonial Ghanaians in the coastal regions learnt and spoke a variety of European languages; Danish and (Swiss) German by the Ewe, Ga and Akwapim peoples to the east, English by some Ga and Fante peoples in the central coastal region, and Dutch by the peoples of Elmina and the 76

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Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

west. However, after 1874, when the United Kingdom became the sole European power in colonial Ghana, English became the lingua franca and gained added attraction. The coastal region thus became completely anglicized; and Cape Coast until 1877 the British operational headquarters in colonial Ghana, best exemplified the anglicisation. In 1915, Kobina Sekyi had occasion to draw attention to the debilitating effects of the process in his long satirical poem, “The Sojourner”: …I go to school on weekdays (excepting Saturdays)…

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I speak English to soften my harsher native tongue, It matters not if often I speak the Fanti wrong. I’m learning to be British, and treat with due contempt, The worship of the fetish, from which I am exempt. I was baptized an infant, a Christian hedged around With prayer from the moment my being was unbound. I’m clad in coat and trousers, with boots upon my feet; And atamfurafo and Hausas I seldom deign to greet For I despise the native that wears the native dress The badge that marks the bushman, who never will progress, All native ways are silly, repulsive, unrefined, All customs superstitious, that rule the savage mind. … I soon shall go to England… And there I’ll try my hardest to learn the English life, And I will try to marry a real English wife!1

These developments were not peculiar to colonial Ghana. They were found in all areas of European colonial influence. We learn from Kopytoff (1965) Echeruo (1977) Mann (1985) and from the essays in Curtin (1972), de Moraes Farias and Barber (1990) and Roberts (1992) that there were similar, if not the same, developments throughout West Africa. Gocking (1999) tells us that the developments created ‘Januslike’ colonial Ghanaians who simultaneously faced the north Atlantic and African worlds and Korang (2004) characterizes them as colonial Ghanaian intellectuals “writing Ghana and imaging Africa”. 1

Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Cape Coast, ACC641/64

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Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

The intense desire by coastal colonial Ghanaians to be ‘Black British men’ soon gave way to disillusionment as colonialism gained firm grounds and they were weeded out of the political, economic and social competition for colonial resources. The political and social factors that led to the marginalization of the emergent Gold Coast Euro-Africans might be summarized as follows. There were a series of rapid political developments in colonial Ghana after the first quarter of the nineteenth century that consolidated British influence. In 1830, Britain decided against withdrawing from the Gold Coast after a series of disastrous wars against the inland state of Asante; in the same year George Maclean negotiated peace between the coastal states and Asante, and fourteen years later, in 1844, the discussions that preceded the peace agreement were formulated into a ‘Bond’ between the British and the coastal states. In 1850 and 1873, the Danes and the Dutch respectively left the Gold Coast and their possessions bought by the British. In 1850, 1856 and 1876 the British established the Legislative Council of the Gold Coast, Gold Coast Military Corps and the Supreme Court of the Gold Coast. In addition to institutional structures, the British imposed a tax of one shilling per head in 1852 on adults in ‘British protected areas’ in southern Gold Coast, subdued Asante in 1873, and declared a colony over the coastal areas and enacted the Chiefs Ordinance in 1878 to regulate the power and authority of chiefs. The period under review also witnessed tremendous advances in medical science leading to the discovery of the causes and cure of malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases that had made the west coast of Africa ‘the white man’s grave’. These discoveries made the Gold Coast safer for European habitation, enabling larger numbers of Europeans to live longer in the Gold Coast than was previously the case, resulting naturally in decreased demands for Gold Coast intermediaries as larger numbers of Europeans were progressively employed in positions occupied by Gold Coast Euro-Africans. Finally, the second half of the nineteenth century saw the resurgence in false notions of European superiority, exacerbating poor racial relations and decreased enthusiasm for employment of Gold Coast EuroAfricans by Europeans. 78

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Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

These developments placed Britain in a dominant position and made it the de facto colonial power in the Gold Coast, even before the Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885. They negatively affected the fortunes of the Gold Coast Euro-Africans, who were paradoxically rejected by the system that produced them. In their alienation, the responses of Gold Coast Euro-Africans were multifaceted; they challenged European incursion and imposition of colonial rule culturally, politically, legally and intellectually. It is to the cultural aspects of their response that we shall now turn our attention.

2. Language and nationalism in the Gold Coast

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Over half a century ago, Kohn (1945: 10) basing himself on the historical development of nationalism in Europe, perceptively advised us that nationalism is “a deliberate and conscious process” and that claims to a common origin, ancestry, destiny and purpose may either singly or in combination fuel the development of nationalism. Nationalism is, therefore, a deliberate conscious process that must first be created, fostered and gradually allowed to evolve. Again, we learn from Barker (1927: 12) that “a common speech is the main cohesive bond of nations”, but lack of a common speech does not prevent the rise of nationalism. Early colonial Ghanaian nationalist intellectuals were acutely aware that the Gold Coast nation and nationalism had to be deliberately promoted and the coastal languages were to be the “cohesive bonds” with which Gold Coast nationalism would be cemented.

2.1. Early strong advocates of the use of Ghanaian languages Reverends Anaman, Acquaah and lawyer Sekyi were all coastal Fante and early Ghanaian nationalist intellectuals who lived between 1866 and 1956, a period of great national ferment that also produced towering nationalist intellectuals like, Christian Carl Reindorf, Solomon Richard Brew Attoh Ahuma, John Mensah Sarbah and Ephraim Casely Hayford. A minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church and for a long time the irrepressible editor of its paper, The Gold Coast Methodist Times, Reverend Attoh Ahuma was originally known as Richard Brew Solomon. In 1897, then still Reverend Solomon and characteristic of the nationalist 79

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Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku .

thinking of the times but completely against the grain of the thinking of the Church, he initiated a debate on the advisability of the resumption of Gold Coast names by persons baptized with Judeo-Christian names into the Church. The inconclusive debate was vigorously carried out in the Gold Coast Methodist Times replete with advertisements in poetic language of changes of names. But by the time the paper carried the last contribution on the issue, the mind of Reverend Solomon on the matter had been made up. He changed his surname to Attoh Ahuma and intoned the plea: “Do not rob us of ourselves” (Attoh Ahuma: 1905) that in part forms the title of this paper. All three gentlemen were full-time professionals: Anaman and Acquaah were ministers of the gospel in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and Sekyi, a barrister and solicitor, but they also considered Gold Coast nationalist politics as full-time business. They were prolific writers and advocates of Fante and Gold Coast national issues. Sekyi, the youngest of the three was, in addition, a publicist who used every opportunity afforded by litigation in court and fora mounted by the numerous civil society organisations for lectures to ventilate his views. Together, their views as explored presently on the development and promotion of Fante2 and other coastal languages as ‘national’ languages show deep appreciation of the intrinsic relation between national language, nationalism and national development. But they had many other things in common. All three had early confessional relations with the Wesleyan Methodist church, the EuroChristian church dominant in the Fanti coast lands—they therefore married monogamously; they were as African as they were European, thus, they wrote and spoke fine English and were as comfortable in conversation and communication with English Europeans as they were with Fanti Akan; they lived their multiple identities oblivious to the attendant contradictions, ambiguities and ambivalences, thus they were 2

Many people treat Fante, Asante and Akuapem as if they were different languages. They are not; they are dialects of the same language we call Akan. Again Fante is written variously as Fante, Fanti, Fantse and Mfantse. We will use the more common form ‘Fante,’ but where we quote a source, we will maintain the original spelling. Also, where a source refers to the ‘Fante/Fanti language’, we will maintain that in the quotation.

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Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

at once fiercely loyal to some Fanti Akan cultures and cultural institutions as they were to British ones, thus they provided the finest possible formal education for their children and yet campaigned for Fanti/Gold Coast language education. In addition Sekyi, for example, wore Fanti cloth at the least opportunity and yet ordered three piece designer suits from reputable upperclass tailoring shops in Britain and smoked aristocratic cigar imported from Malta. Juggling two lives, they participated vigorously in the great debates about the demoralising effects of the Anglicization and Europeanisation of the Gold Coast: what aspects of European intrusion represented civilisation and modernisation, and what aspects constituted encroachment on Gold Coast cultures; the necessity to recover the Gold Coast past to reveal that the peoples of the Gold Coast were active participants in shaping their histories; they also debated what constituted tradition and modernity and what was wholesome for the development of the Gold Coast; what aspects of Gold Coast cultures should be retained and which should be jettisoned. In these debates, they implicitly accepted as given the universality of the Euro-Christian religion but predictably argued that it could be Africanised. For Anaman, the Africanisation was to be total—the Christian church in the Gold Coast was to be built and led by Africans; in other words, it was to be African in every sense of the word. For Acquaah, the Africanisation was to be partial; it was to involve the use of Gold Coast languages and cultural idioms. These views were not just reactions to European racism that ensured that top positions in the church were reserved for Europeans only; they were also genuine expressions of the belief that Christian ideas could be adequately expressed in Gold Coast languages and cultures. To gain an understanding of these men and the impact of their work, we provide short biographical data on each of them below.

2.1.1. Reverend Jacob Benjamin Anaman. Reverend Anaman was born on 12 February 1866 and died in January 1939, only a month away from his seventy-third birthday. He is of interest to us for many reasons: he was an accomplished linguist who published extensively in Fante and Nzema, but has regrettably and comparatively 81

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Language and Nationalism in Colonial Ghana

Kofi K. Saah and Kofi Baku

not been accorded extensive serious scholarly study. He was also one of the earliest Gold Coast nationalist intellectuals who insisted that abstract and complex scientific ideas could be expressed in Fante and Nzema. Additionally, Reverend Anaman was the only Gold Coaster of his age who did not travel to Europe to research and to publish his books. A son of Reverend Isaac Anaman, a conformist Wesleyan Reverend Minister, who urged caution and the exercise of freedom of choice in adopting indigenous Gold Coast names for Euro-Christian ones, Reverend Anaman first studied music, stenography and phonography, as a result of which it was said that he became acquainted with nearly every word in the English dictionary. Not surprisingly, he developed early proficiency in the reading and writing of his native Fante and later of Nzema. And typical of the intricate and complex confessional, intellectual and social networks of the time in colonial Ghana, Reverend Anaman quickly and astutely exploited his father’s contacts with Reverends W.M. Cannel, Richard Rossal and R.W. Terry Coppin, who all served at one time or the other in the Anomabu Circuit, to receive further education and to improve himself; studying Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Natural History, Mathematics and Theology. He, however, soon abandoned his initial Wesleyan Methodist confessional relations and, in pursuit of his Fanti nationalist zeal, established the independent Nigritian Church in which in his own words, ‘every part of the services in this Church is in Mfantsi, pure and simple’ (The Gold Coast Nation: 20/7/1918). Not surprisingly, he soon issued the Fanti Hymn Book for use in his church. In addition to his profession as a churchman, for a time Anaman was also the editor of the fortnightly Gold Coast Methodist Times which was founded in 1886 by the Wesleyan Methodist Mission in Cape Coast. Its first editors were Reverend Anaman’s benefactors: Reverends Cannell and Coppin. Reverend Anaman began his distinguished, yet uncelebrated, publishing career in 1888 when he wrote The Gold Coast Almanac, a compilation of a brief historical resumé of interesting local events in the Gold Coast, up to 1888; including records about the early newspaper press in the Gold Coast, the dates on which they were founded and their editors; that Captain John Sarbah, a coastal Fanti soldier, fought gallantly in the Anglo-Asante war in 1873; the establishment of Brotherhoods and Lodges in the Gold Coast and the opening of 82

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the first Reading Room in Cape Coast in 1860. The Almanac eventually became an annual publication and gave weight to the Fanti historical past and traditions. It was also a precursor of a long tradition of “historical publications” to be issued by Gold Coast nationalist intellectuals. Further, Reverend Anaman continued ‘historical publications’ in 1895, the year in which Reverend Christian Carl Reindorf, the Gold Coast Basel Minister in the eastern districts of the Gold Coast, published his History of the Gold Coast and Asante in Basel, the first full length history about the Gold Coast by a Gold Coaster, when he issued The Gold Coast Guide. The Gold Coast Guide expanded the historical entries in The Gold Coast Almanac and suggested that the Fanti and Asante were the descendants of migrants from the Ancient Ghana Empire when it fell to Almoravid attack in the twelfth century. Even though this claim was steeped in controversy, it in part formed the basis for the assumption of the name Ghana when Gold Coast became independent. British colonial rule was consolidated in the Gold Coast after the First World War with a more thoughtful formulation and implementation of colonial policy; the indirect rule policy being a cardinal one. The inter-war period therefore witnessed the permeation of the Gold Coast hinterland by British colonial officers and the need for fuller knowledge of the histories, cultures, customs and languages of Gold Coast peoples. The Colonial Government took the lead by establishing the Office of the Secretary for Native Affairs and the Anthropological Department, both of which had responsibility for studying local governance institutions as the basis for formulating colonial policy. With Captain Ralph Sutherland Rattray firmly in the saddle of the Anthropological Department and a host of colonial administrative officers vigorously scrambling for the ‘Goldcoastiana’ and, not wishing to be left out, Reverend Anaman joined the fray enthusiastically and productively. In 1919 he published Simple Stories from Gold Coast History in Cape Coast, an easy reader aimed at persons making their first acquaintance with the country and young Gold Coasters. This was soon followed up by his linguistic publications in Nzema and Fanti, partly aimed at inculcating a sense of national pride of young people in their languages and partly in response to the requirement that British colonial officers must be proficient in at least one Gold Coast language to be eligible for 83

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a successful career in the Gold Coast. Thus between 1926 and the date of his death, Reverend Anaman, working with prodigious energy issued Standard Nzima (Accra, 1926), English and Nzima Key Book (Accra, 1927), The Gold Coast Vernacular and the Prince of Wales College, Achimota (Accra, 1927). The latter book was published when a lively debate, encouraged by the Colonial Government and educationists, raged on the utility of Gold Coast languages in education generally, and whether the newly-established Prince of Wales College, Achimota, should incorporate the teaching of Gold Coast languages in its curriculum. Reverend Anaman naturally supported the use of Gold Coast languages in schools. Other Gold Coast language publications by Reverend Anaman, yet to receive serious scholarly study are The Fanti and English Instructor, Enyidado pa ho Ndowom, The Fanti Spelling Book, Akyekyewere Ndwom (Songs of Comfort), Fanti Life of Jesus, Fanti Primer 1, Fanti Primer 11, Fanti Primer 111.

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2.1.2. Reverend Gaddiel Robert Acquaah Like Reverend Anaman, Reverend Acquaah was the son a Wesleyan Methodist Minister, Reverend R.M. Acquaah. But, unlike his compatriot, Reverend Acquaah stuck to the Wesleyan Methodist church into which he was baptized an infant and became the “Methodist educator who played the major role in the translation of the Bible into the Fante language.” (Ofosu-Appiah, 1977: 186). He was born in 1884 at Anomabo, when the town was still important in British operations in the Gold Coast. Like all young men of his age with well connected, financially well heeled and visionary parents, Reverend Acquaah was educated at his father’s alma mater, the Cape Coast Wesleyan Collegiate School, then undergoing a revival under the leadership of Reverend Edgar C. Barton who carefully prepared his pupils for the Preliminary College of Preceptors Examination in December 1901. Reverend Acquaah studied the sciences and together with J.C. deGraft Johnson (who later served with distinction in the colonial service rising to the rank of Assistant Secretary for Native Affairs) and Frederick Cann (who became a teacher at the school) and passed his final examination with honours. He, however, abandoned a vocation in applied science and followed a familiar path, a spell of teaching in Methodist Schools in the Central and West84

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ern Provinces, capped with ordination into the Methodist church in 1912, and returned to his alma mater as the theological tutor. Nothing else was expected. His father, Reverend R.M. Acquaah, was after all a senior African minister of the church. Soon distinguished in his own right as a worthy minister of the Church, Reverend Acquaah was appointed, together with Reverend C.W. Armstrong, chairman and general superintendent of the Church, Reverend E.A. Sackey, Sister Frances Green, J.C. deGraft Johnson and L.S. Pickard, to the membership of the Centenary Committee of the Church. At the Centenary celebrations itself which commenced in the night of 31st December 1934, exactly one hundred years to the date when Reverend Joseph Rhodes Dunwell, the first Methodist missionary to the Gold Coast, arrived in Cape Coast, Reverend Acquaah, as Cape Coast Superintendent Minister, conducted the Watch Night Service. The centenary celebrations were fittingly brought to a close on 12 January 1935 with the singing of “Centenary Bells,” specially composed for the occasion by Reverend Acquaah. Furthermore, advantaged by good education and excellent linguistic skills, Reverend Acquaah embarked on a most successful career in the Methodist Church when in 1940 he was appointed chairman of the Methodist Bible Translation Committee and according to Ofosu-Appiah (1977: 186) “was allowed to devote his time wholly to the revision and translation of the Bible into the new Fanti script that had been adopted”; a task he accomplished with his collaborator, Reverend Kenneth Horn, a British linguist and a teacher in Achimota School. The Fante Bible was eventually delivered to the British and Foreign Bible Society for publication in 1944; and publication was completed in January 1949. Having distinguished himself in the leadership of the Church, it was only a matter of time for Reverend Acquaah to lead the Church that he had faithfully served from infancy. That moment came in 1950 when he was elected the first African Chairman and General Superintendent of the Ghana District of the Methodist Church; he served until 1954 and earned an OBE. With such distinguished career in the Church, it was not surprising that Reverend Acquaah devoted himself to writing religious tracts and songs in Fanti and championing the use of Fanti at every available 85

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opportunity. His publications in Fanti include Akyikyiwire Ndwim (Songs of Comfort) (London, 1927), John Wesley Methodifo Asore ne farebaa, 1703-1791 (Cape Coast, 1938), Oguaa Aban (Cape Coast Castle) (London, 1939), New Fanti Primer (Kumase, 1939), MfantseAkan Mbebusem (Fanti – Akan Proverbs) (Cape Coast, 1940), Venice oguadzinyi no (Merchant of Venice) (London, no date), Mfantse-Akan ahyese (Fanti Primer Beginners) (Sekondi, 1941), Mfantse Amambra (Fanti National Constitution) (Cape Coast, 1947), Methodist asore ba biara ahosiesie. Onyame, hwehwe me mu (literally: Preparation for every Methodist Church service: God should examine me) (Cape Coast, 1953), Ofa Methodistnyi biara ho. Nyankopon, pensa pensa mo mu (literally: God searches into the soul of every Methodist) (Cape Coast, 1953). His many Fanti songs are found in the Fanti version of the Methodist Hymn Book (i.e., Christian Asôr Ndwom). In recognition of the importance of Rev. Acquaah’s work in the promotion of Fanti, Rev. J. Yedu Bannerman (1978: iii) pays homage to him thus: Sôfopanyin Gaddiel Acquaah W’amandâ, wo gyedzi gye hân nkaa. ………………. Wo ndwom kyerâw na Mfantse kasa Yâ dâw se ewo na mborônsa: Yâ nom ano dâ nyansa kuraba. Yâ da w’ase da w’ase, akaekyirmba. Gyedzinyi ‘banyansafo ho yâ na, Nyimpa bâ yââ bi nnyâ ne nyina. Very Reverend Gaddiel Acquaah Your patriotism and faith deserve acknowledgement. …………………………………….. Your musical compositions and manner of speaking Fante Are as sweet as honey and sweet wine: We drink of them as from the cup of wisdom. We, the later generation thank you and thank you. A faithful and wise person is rare, A person comes to play his part, not to do everything. (Translation ours) 86

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2.1.3. William Esuman Gwira Kobina Sekyi. Born in 1892, Sekyi is the last of our three nationalist intellectuals who extolled the utility of Gold Coast languages in the evolution of nationalism and national consciousness. Generously supported from the estate of his maternal uncles W.E. Pieterson and Henry Van Hein, successful Gold Coast businessmen, Sekyi received a fine education in the Gold Coast and in England. He obtained BA and MA in Philosophy in 1915 and 1918 respectively from the University of London where he was a student at its University College. He was called to the Bar at the Inns of Court in 1918. Back in the Gold Coast he combined legal practice with trenchant opposition to colonialism and never lost an opportunity to apply his sound knowledge of law to subvert and undermine colonial rule. In 1935, in his effort to raise funds to support the delegation of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society to England to protest the Sedition and Water Works Bills, Sekyi delivered a series of lectures in Cape Coast entitled “The Meaning of the Expression ‘Thinking in English’” in which he analysed the relationship between language and national character and drew the conclusion that Gold Coasters had accepted British colonialism and cultural norms, and rejected local Gold Coast culture, in part because they were enamoured with the English language. A complete set of the lectures is available in the Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Cape Coast (ACC No. 531/64).3 In these lectures Sekyi, the philosopher and nationalist, presented his views on language and thought in a way that is reminiscent of ‘linguistic determinism’ (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) – ‘the idea that the language people speak controls how they think’ (Pinker 2008: 124). We will not delve into how he develops his argument in this particular study. For our present purposes, we are interested in Sekyi because some of his assertions about language, thought and language use are reflective of his nationalism and love for his native Fanti. 3

Our source for these papers is archival material patiently typed by one of the authors. These materials will therefore by identified by their reference number and no page references will be given since they may vary from the original.

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First, Sekyi asserts ‘that for all practical purposes, the expression ‘Thinking in English’ is intelligible only if it is taken to mean thinking in the English manner, not thinking with English words, but thinking with British ideas as elements in the process of thought. He shows how ‘Thinking in English’ had affected every aspect of the culture of the people of the Gold Coast. We mention just a few here: In Lecture 4 of the series which he titled “Examples of thinking in English” he discusses the issue of the naming of children and asserts,

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Thinking in English on such a topic results in one of the many anomalies that hamper our development as a people with a distinct contribution to make to civilization. A few of us now always insist on naming our children in the Akan-Fanti manner, namely leaving each child with his or her week-day name and the name of the paternal ancestor which is usually the second or distinguishing name.

He laments the fact that the bias towards things European had resulted in the situation where children with no European names are “mercilessly teased in school, sometimes even with the connivance or active encouragement of teachers, into demanding tearfully at home brofudzin,4 because their schoolmates have such anomalous and meaningless names!” Sekyi practiced what he preached. It is therefore no wonder that, in later life, he himself became popularly known as Kobina Sekyi, instead of William Essuman-Gwira Sekyi and he ‘usually appeared in public in the Akan toga’, any time he was not expected to be formally attired (Ofosu-Appiah 1977: 316). Even so, on many occasions, Sekyi pushed the point to the limit. At the time when a woolen western suit was the badge of honour in Cape Coast, Sekyi insisted that he would wear the African cloth for his wedding. The elite Cleanand family into which he was marrying, fiercely resisted him, and in the end the poor bride Lily Anna Cleanand suffered the embarrassment of her newly-wedded husband fleeing from the church and photographers soon after the ceremony to exchange his three-piece suit for his favourite cloth. On another occasion, Sekyi appeared in court for the hearing of a case in which he was a barrister attired in cloth; the scandalised judge refused 4

“English name”

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to hear the case unless Sekyi appeared properly attired: three-piece suit, wig, bib and gown. At the inaugural meeting of the National Congress of British West Africa in Accra in March 1920, at which Sekyi read one of the keynote addresses, he attended the entire three-week proceedings in cloth, and finally, when Sekyi was appointed a member of the Council of the University College of the Gold Coast, he attended every single meeting of the Council attired in cloth. Sekyi’s change of name, following that of Reverend Attoh Ahuma, became infectious. Nationalist politicians of the generation after him avidly copied his example. We now know from Ako Adjei (2002: 22-26), a contemporary of Kwame Nkrumah at Lincoln College in Philadelphia, that even though Kwame Nkrumah was christened Francis Nwia Kofi Nkrumah, and he maintained that in all his official documents he soon came to be known as simply Kofi Nkrumah, and subsequently Kwame Nkrumah when he enrolled at Lincoln. Kofi Nkrumah became Kwame Nkrumah when he became persuaded that the creator of the universe came into being on Saturday. Joseph Frederick Busia also became Kofi Abrefa Busia on 2nd April 1939 on the basis that “he was neither Hebrew nor German and in any case Abrefa was a greater name” (Donkoh, nd: 85-86). On the dispensation of justice, Sekyi had a lot to say with regards to the quality of the judgments and the language used in expressing them: Reading over the judgements of the older judges and comparing them with the judgements that I saw accumulating round me, I was obliged to conclude, very sadly, that the caliber of our judges was not like that of the earlier days and that judgements were less sound in law and more poorly expressed in English.

Clearly, for Sekyi, there is a correlation between ‘thinking’ in a foreign language and the quality of ideas expressed. He also criticized the situation whereby cases were decided by a single magistrate or by a judge without a jury, contrary to “the Akan and Fanti standpoint, baako nkô egyina that is, one man cannot decide a case.” Sekyi offered his views about building technology. He posited that “[B]uildings would be much cheaper and healthier if built of local mate89

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rial, such as the detsi (swish), and the home-made lime made of shell.” Instead, “[t]hinking in English has led us to show a preference for material that comes from abroad.” Talk about appropriate technology! On language, Sekyi made certain pronouncements which we deem very important. He states:

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. . . I do not endorse the views often expressed here, by those who cannot read or write Fanti, and who certainly are not capable translators, that our language is defective for expression of English ideas or expressions, especially in the presentation of abstract thought or scientific matter. Those who speak thus have not considered the extreme malleability of our language, like the Greek language in which it is easy to make neat verbal combinations to express new ideas. The Fanti language is rich in its vocabulary; but this is known only to careful students, who, as such, have no bias in favour of civilized people, so-called, and against backward people, so-called . . . It seems to me that those who qualify languages as rude or polished are afflicted by a confusion of ideas.

As a linguist and an historian, we completely endorse the views expressed by Sekyi above. We agree totally with Sekyi that Fante, and for that matter, any of our Ghanaian or African languages, is capable of being used to “express abstract thought or scientific matter.” Linguists do not rank languages on “some scale of superiority;” instead they view all languages as equal and capable of being used by their speakers to communicate and to express their thoughts (O’Grady et al, 1996: 6). No human language is ‘rude’ or uncivilised. Every language has a grammar, whether it is written or not. As O’Grady et al (1996: 5) succinctly put it, Since all languages are spoken, they must have phonetic and phonological systems; since they all have words and sentences, they must also have a morphology and a syntax; since these words and sentences have systematic meanings, there obviously must have semantic principles as well. As these are the things that make up a grammar, it follows that all human languages have this type of system.

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Sometimes, when people are confronted with an unfamiliar language, they tend to think that that language does not have the above essential characteristics of human language and tend to dismiss them as inferior languages. Fante, and all the other Ghanaian languages, are not inferior in any way. They can be used for any purpose that any human language can be used for, if only we the speakers have the will to do so. Even though Sekyi’s view on the local languages was linguistically sound, it was not shared by all his countrymen. For example, writing in the immediate aftermath of independence, J.T.N. Yankah, a professional teacher, concluded that ‘local languages were not sufficiently developed in terms of flexibility, vocabulary, and knowledge’. Furthermore, he was convinced that the adoption of English would help Ghanaian children to understand science subjects, and ‘thereby more readily develop a scientific attitude of mind’ (Ofosu-Appiah, 1977: 328). As we shall see in the next section of this paper, it is this erroneous view about the local languages that has dogged our efforts as a nation to develop a coherent, workable and acceptable policy on ‘language in education’ up to the present time. While we were researching this paper, we came across a manuscript titled “An English-Twi Dictionary of Chemistry & Physics” which was prepared by an American Peace Corps volunteer called Rudolf W. Sovinee, Jr. (a.k.a. Akwasi Poku) between 1971 and 1973. We understand that he used this to teach science in secondary schools in the Eastern Region with considerable success, proving Sekyi’s assertion that Fanti is capable of being used to express scientific thought. We can trace Sekyi’s love for and facility in the use of Fanti to the training he had as a child. He states that “When I was about six years old, I was made to commence lessons in reading and writing of both English and Fanti, and my first teacher was my mother.” We doff our hats to Sekyi’s mother, Mrs. Wilhelmina Sackey (née Pieterson), one of the first Gold Coast female teachers in Wesley Girls’ High School who saw the wisdom in teaching her young child to read and write both English and Fanti. This is what made him adept at the use of both English and Fanti, something that is evident in his writings. Studies in language acquisition show that children utilize the same skills they use in learning their first language in learning a second or 91

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third language. It is a well-known fact that “if a child is exposed to two languages, she learns both; and if a child is exposed to three, the child learns three, and so on . . . Children who are exposed to and use more than one language will acquire (and retain) all the languages” (Crain and Lillo-Martin 1999: 7). These days, some parents, who think they are giving their children a head start in the learning of English, speak English to them at home. What these parents are doing is that they are denying their children their inalienable right to learn or acquire their mother tongue or first language, which in turn, will facilitate the learning of additional languages like English. If we are not careful, one day our children will admonish us: “do not rob us of ourselves.” In The Blinkards (1915) which Sekyi wrote on his return from his first stint in England, and which was staged in the same year in which it was written before an enthusiastic and hilarious crowd including the Commissioner for the Central Province and the District Commissioner for Cape Coast, he demonstrates a keen sense of awareness of language use among the people of the coast. One of the characters Mrs. Borôfosâm, is always engaged in Fante-English code-switching and code mixing. For example: (a) ‘… ei! Ndaansa yi meepractise ndwom a ber a mowô Aborôkyir no wôsee me dâ montow no. ‘These days, I’m practicing the song that they told me sing when I was overseas.’ (b) Mo werâ efir word kor yi mbrâ wosi bôdzin; … ‘I’ve forgotten how this word is pronounced’ (Sekyi 1915: 7, Act One). Sekyi’s disdain for those who affect English manners in everything, including their choice of language and way of dressing, first expressed in his long poem “The Sojourner” was repeated in The Blinkards when Mr. Okadu demonstrates his total alienation from his culture by saying: A product of the Law School, embroidered by the High, Upbrought and trained by similar products, here am I, I speak English to soften my harsher native tongue: It matters not if often I speak the Fanti wrong. (Sekyi 1915)

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3. Language in education

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The discussion on language and nationalism cannot be complete without mentioning the vexed issue of the medium of instruction in our schools. It is sad to note that after 52 years of independence we have not been able to fashion a consistent language policy that will allow for accelerated development of our indigenous languages and their use in education. Most of the time when the issue of language in education is raised, opponents of the use of local languages in schools point to the fact that there are no textbooks written in these languages, and as a result subjects like mathematics, science, geography, etc. cannot be taught in our languages. This argument is often made by teachers and policy makers as well as parents. We would like to state that that situation arises because we have not had the political will to commit time, energy and resources into the development of such teaching and learning materials in our languages. Owu-Ewie (2006: 77) provides the following chronology of the legislation on the use of Ghanaian languages in education: From 1925 to 1951, a Ghanaian language was used as medium of instruction for the first three years. Between 1951 and 1956, it was used only for the first year. From 1957 to 1966 a Ghanaian language was not used at all, from 1967 to 1969 it was used only for the first year, and between 1970 and 1974 a Ghanaian language was used for the first three years, and where possible beyond (to the sixth year). From 1974 to 2002, a Ghanaian language was used for the first three years.

As we have stated already, Reverends Anaman and Acquaah and lawyer Sekyi favoured the use of the local languages (the first two actually taught Fante and produced primers and literature in it). There were other strong advocates of the use of Ghanaian languages as the media of instruction in the Gold Coast/Ghanaian schools. C. A. Akrofi, an eminent Ghanaian linguist, is said to have “stressed ‘linguistic nationalism’—the adoption of a national language as the only weapon against tribalism and the fragmentation of the national effort” (Ofosu-Appiah, 93

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1977: 193). Though he did not succeed in this venture, he established his reputation as a linguist in authoring four books, prominent among them being his Twi Kasa Mmara (Twi Grammar Book) which was published in 1938. Reverend Erasmus Awuku Asamoa, an educationist and a minister of the Presbyterian Church, was also a passionate advocate of the use of Ghanaian languages as the medium of instruction in the first few years in schools. He advocated a “system of bilingualism” in which there will be “the development of a national language” as well as “adopting English as a second language” (Asamoa 1955: 72). Rev. Asamoa shows his linguistic nationalism in the following assertion: National self-expression can show itself in art and music; in the pattern of social and political life; and in the moral and spiritual aspirations which inspire and direct national activities. There is also one other form of expression which is unique, and that is language; and it is unique because it is not only in itself an expression of the national soul, but is also the channel through which the other forms—moral and spiritual concepts, and pattern of social and political life—find their fullest expression.

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In his views on language and nationalism, Rev. Asamoa shared a kindred spirit with Reverends Anaman and Acquaah and lawyer Sekyi. On the use of Ghanaian languages as the media of instruction, he states: We believe in the fundamental importance of the vernacular in the educational development of the present-day Gold Coast. We believe not only that the vernacular is of primary importance as the basis of the child’s education, but also that through it alone, the Gold Coast African can in all stages of his life be educated in the highest sense of the word. We understand education to mean, not merely the acquisition of knowledge, but the development of all the good potentialities of a man’s personality; and we hold that these potentialities are inextricably bound up with a man’s national and cultural background, and that the most fundamental and the most adequate expression of this background is one’s language. (Asamoa, 1955:67)

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One would ask, ‘With such strong advocates of the use of Ghanaian languages as the media of instruction in the first few years of formal education, why is it that the problem has persisted to the present time?’ One of the reasons for this is the fact that other Gold Coasters strongly opposed the use of Ghanaian languages as media of instruction because they thought it would amount to giving the children inferior education. One of such opponents of the policy, as we have noted, was J. T. N. Yankah who, despite a strong case in support of the use of Ghanaian languages in education, “favoured English rather than the Ghanaian languages as the medium of instruction in primary schools, in sincere belief that this would be more beneficial to the children” (Ofosu-Appiah 1977:327). According to Ofosu-Appiah (1977:328):

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Yankah became a force to reckon with in deciding on the choice of a medium of instruction in primary schools. He stood firm in opposition to the Graduate Teachers’ Association, the association of Training College Teachers, and the Presbyterian educational Unit, all of whom upheld the majority report of the Barnard educational Committee of 1954, which recommended that African languages should be the medium of instruction in primary schools.

It is our view that Yankah was “thinking in English” when he authored his “minority report, which advocated the use of English as a medium of instruction” and which “was adopted by the government and implemented in 1959” (Ofosu-Appiah, 1977:328). Since then we have been going back and forth about this issue till the present time. It is surprising that one person’s view on such an important issue could hold sway in such a manner. What is even more surprising is that, with the benefit of current linguistic research, we still hold on to this view. Another reason that has been used to jettison the use of local languages in education is that there are no textbooks written in these languages for the teaching and learning the various subjects. For example, at the time that the Minister of Education announced the change from the use of Ghanaian languages as media of instruction in the first three years of school to English only in 2002, the German Non-Governmental Organi95

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sation, GTZ, in an attempt at promoting the use of local languages as the media of instruction in primary schools, had developed textbooks in Akan (Fanti, Asante-Twi and Akuapem-Twi), Ewe and Ga, Gonja and Dagbani for mathematics, environmental science and the languages themselves together with teachers’ books between 2001 and 2002, but these have not been put to use. We are informed that the books were on the high seas bound for Ghana when the government of the day decided that English should be used as the medium of instruction from primary one upwards. As if that was not enough, the minister declared on national television that there were no textbooks written in Ghanaian languages for the various subjects, while his name and signature appear at the bottom of the ‘Foreword’ to these books.

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Conclusion The use of Ghanaian languages in expressing Ghanaian identity and nationality was central to the nationalist struggle in the Gold Coast, as indeed it was in many parts of the world. Dominated by a foreign culture and language and painfully discriminated against, the people of colonial Ghana discovered that they had a lot more in common than they had previously known. As the elite of colonial Ghana were increasingly alienated by the system that produced them, they fell back on their indigenous societies for support to combat the colonial system. In their struggle to affirm the viability and dignity of their indigenous languages as capable of effective communication and expressing complex thoughts, early Gold Coast intellectuals found allies in the early Christian missionaries who worked in the Gold Coast. It is interesting to note that while the Christian missionaries and their local collaborators recognized the importance of the use of Ghanaian languages in schools (at least for the first three years) in pre-independence Ghana, the opposite has been the case since independence. As Asamoa (1955: 62) puts it, The attitude of the educational authorities in the Gold Coast seems to be: let us use the vernacular because we cannot for a time avoid it, but let us get rid of it as soon as we can; because it is our own language and we cannot discard it, let us give it a place in the curriculum, but for goodness’ sake do not let it usurp the place of English.

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We believe that this attitude persists till this day. We need the ‘linguistic nationalism’ of Reverends Anaman, Acquaah, Asamoa and lawyer Sekyi to shake us out of our infatuation with the English language and to appreciate the virtues of our languages as the vehicles for the expression of our national identity. By their pronouncements on the use of Fante and/or Nzema, their pioneering efforts in producing literature in these languages, and by teaching them, Anaman and Acquaah have contributed in no small way to the development of these languages. Their achievements parallel that of Akrofi, who is noted for his linguistic works especially in Akuapem Twi. Sekyi’s views on the use of Fante, and the way he pokes fun at those who speak English rather than their own local languages, give us food for thought. If we could stop “thinking in English” and look for local solutions to many of our national problems, perhaps we will develop as fast as, if not faster than, the Asian tigers we now admire. One of the ways in which a language develops is when great works of literature are produced in it or when an important work of literature is translated into it. By their monumental work of translating the great works of their age: the Bible, the Church hymnaries, religious books and tracts into Fante, Reverends Anaman and Acquaah were following the examples of the early European linguists in the Gold Coast who popularized Gold Coast languages. Again, by preaching their sermons in Fante, Reverends Anaman and Acquaah were tangibly demonstrating that the word of God could be adequately expressed in their own language, and it was not shameful to speak Fanti as many of the people believed. Finally, through their own works in Fante and Nzema as well as teaching them, they elevated the languages into literary status, making Fanti one of the three ‘standard’ forms of the Akan language. Additionally, Reverend Acquaah’s Oguaa Aban (Cape Coast Castle) first published in 1939 with a new edition in 1968, must be mentioned. It is, according to the author, “a brief Ghana History in Fanti Verse of 1364 lines, written in iambic pentameter” which recounts “the past glory of the Cape Coast Castle, as a great centre for Commerce, Education, Religion, Politics, etc.” (p. vii). This work has been studied by generations of students in secondary schools in Ghana, as well as universities, because it is standard reading in courses in Ghanaian language studies. 97

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References Acquaah, Gaddiel R. (1939) 1968. Oguaa Aban. New edition. Cape Coast: Methodist Book Depot, Ltd. Ako Adjei, E. 2002. The African Dream. Accra, Apra Services Limited. Asamoa, E. A. 1955. The problem of language in education in the Gold Coast. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 25(1): 60-78. Attoh Ahuma, S.R.B. 1905. Memoirs of West African Celebrities, Europe & c (1700 – 1850), with special reference to the Gold Coast. Liverpool: D. Marples & Co. Bannerman, Rev. J. Yedu 1978. Ghana Fahodzi na Mfatoho. Accra-Tema: Ghana Publishing Corporation. Barker, E. 1927. National Character and Factors in its Formation. London: Oxford University Press. Curtin, P.D. 1972. Africa and the West, Intellectual Responses to European Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Crain, Stephen and Diane Lillo-Martin. 1999. An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition. Malden, Massachusetts. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. de Moraes Farias, P.F. and Karen Barber. 1990. Self-Assertion and Brokerage, Early Cultural Nationalism in West Africa. Birmingham: Centre of West African Studies. Donkoh, C.E. n.d. Nkrumah and Busia of Ghana. Accra: New Times Corporation. Echeruo, M.J.C. 1977. Victorian Lagos. London: Macmillan. Gocking, R. S. 1999. Facing Two Ways, Ghana’s Coastal Communities Under Colonial Rule. New York: University Press of America.

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Hodgkin, T.L. 1951. Background to Nigerian nationalism. West Africa. 4th August issue. Kohn, H. 1945. The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of its Origins and Background. New York: Macmillan. Kopytoff, J.H. 1965. A Preface to Modern Nigeria: The ‘Sierra Leoneans’ in Yoruba, 1830 – 1890. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Korang, K. L. 2004. Writing Ghana, Imaging Africa, Nation and African Modernity. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press. Mann, K. 1985. Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Grady, William, Michael Dobrovolsky and Francis Katamba 1996. Contemporary Linguistics: An introduction. 3rd edition. Harlow, Essex: Addison Wesley Longman Limited. Ofosu-Appiah, L. H. 1977. Ethiopia—Ghana. The Encyclopaedia Africana: dictionary of African Biography. Volume I. New York: Reference Publications Inc.

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Owu-Ewie, Charles. 2006. The language policy of education in Ghana: a critical look at the English-only language policy of education. John Mungane (ed.) Selected Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, pp. 76-85. Pinker, Steven. 2008. The stuff of thought. London: Penguin Books. Roberts, A. 1992. The Colonial Moment in Africa. Essays on the movement of minds and materials, 1900 – 1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sekyi, W.E.G. Kobina. 1915. The Sojourner. Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Cape Coast, ACC641/64. Sekyi, W.E.G. Kobina. 1974 (1915). The Blinkards. Oxford: Heinemann. Sovinee, Jr. Rudolph W. 1971-1973. An English-Twi Dictionary of Chemistry and Physics. Unpublished manuscript.

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Ward, W. E. F. 1965. Fraser of Trinity and Achimota. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.

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Language Use in Education in Minority Language Areas

Kofi Dorvlo

Language Use in Education in Minority Language Areas The Case of Logba

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Kofi Dorvlo The use of mother tongue as the medium of instruction for the first three years in schools in Ghana was the language policy long before independence. However, the challenge faced in minority language areas where a second language rather than a first language is employed as the medium of instruction has not been adequately addressed. This study investigates language use in the classroom in a minority language area, Logba to ascertain the levels of comprehension and performance in the lingua franca, Ewe among the pupils in the first three years of Primary School. This will be compared to the situation of pupils in a monolingual Ewe community in Sokode. The wordless picture book, Frog, where are you? is used as stimulus (Slobin 2004). The findings confirm our initial suspicion that the Logba pupils will have a slightly lower level of competence and consequently a lower degree of comprehension in Ewe than the Sokode pupils.

Introduction Ghana is a multilingual nation with about fifty non-mutually intelligible languages (see Boadi 1994; Dakubu 1996). Out of these, some of the languages have a large native speaker population of about seven to eight million speakers while there are others with a small native speaker population of about two to four thousand speakers. For example, Lewis (2009) reports that Akan and its dialects have 8.3 million speakers and Tafi, one of the Southernmost Ghana Togo Mountain (henceforth GTM) languages have about 4,400 speakers. 100

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Language Use in Education in Minority Language Areas

Kofi Dorvlo

Socio-economic factors have made people move from their homes and settle in other linguistic communities. Some of these people have built houses in the same communities with the indigenous people and have learnt to speak the languages in their present homes as a second language. It is also not uncommon to find people who establish settlements in the outskirts of the towns where they settle, interacting to a large extent only with people who speak their own native languages. These settlements are mostly named after their leader and founder. But it is almost impossible for the people to build their own separate schools in these new settlements. This results in a situation where schools in these areas have sprung up with heterogeneous linguistic groups in the classrooms. One would have thought that this situation would only occur in urban and metropolitan areas. Surprisingly enough, there is a movement of people into minority language areas which are rural with a few thousand native speakers. For example, the large fertile farmland in the southernmost GTM area has attracted settler farmers who have come from other ethnic groups to cultivate the land and process the foodstuffs they harvest. Some other scholars have on the contrary noted that people moved to the GTM area because the GTM area served as a refuge for people fleeing from wars (see Nugent 2005). In the rest of the paper, I discuss language use in education in Ghana and the linguistic situation in the primary schools in Logba. After this, I report the results of the experiments carried out in Logba-Klikpo and the control site Sokode-Etoe in order to investigate the competence and performance in Ewe among the pupils in the two lower primary schools.

1. Language use in education in Ghana—an overview Using indigenous languages as medium of early instruction started with the arrival of the Christian missionaries who had the goal of spreading the Gospel to the local people using their own local languages. Linguistic work and the study of Ghanaian languages date back to the Basel and Bremen Mission days (see Boadi 1994; Dorvlo 2009). In fact, Twi, Ewe and Ga were reduced to writing subsequently Bible stories were 101

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Kofi Dorvlo

translated into these languages. Through the dedicated work of missionaries, these languages developed and were used as tools for formal school education. Catechists and pastors were trained in the churches established by missionaries in these communities. There were, however, frequent shifts of the policy of mother tongue education as medium of instruction. From 1925 to 1951, mother tongue was used as medium of instruction for the first three years. Between 1951 and 1956, it was used in the first year only. Mother tongue was not used at all between 1957 and 1966. Again from 1967 to 1969, it was used only in the first year. From 1970 to 1974 it was found to be expedient to use the mother tongue for the first three years and beyond. It was used again for the first three years from 1974 and was reversed to English only in 2002 precisely on August 15, 2002 (see Owu-Ewie 2006; Anyidoho and Dakubu 2008). All these years, only Twi, Ewe, and Ga were used as medium of instruction in the classroom. Fante, Kasem, and Nzema followed in the 1960s, and in the 1980s Dagaare and Wali were added. Throughout the period that mother tongue was being used as medium of instruction in formal education, minority languages were either disregarded or given insignificant attention. So they remained outside the education system even though research studies showed that mother tongue as the medium of early instruction results in improved knowledge acquisition and in second language learning (Andoh Kumi 1992, 2003). In the southernmost GTM language area, four minority languages— Avatime, Nyagbo, Tafi and Logba—are spoken. These languages lie close to each other with linguistic influences from other languages which have large speaker populations in Ghana and in neighbouring countries. In these areas a lingua franca such as Ewe, rather than the child’s mother tongue, has been used in the first three years of schooling. The assumption is that Ewe, the second language, is as good as the mother tongue. Another reason given by educationists to justify this status quo is that teaching and learning materials in these minority languages are not available in the area.

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2. The case of Logba Logba is one of the fourteen GTM languages concentrated in the hills of the Ghana Togo frontier. These languages are sub-classified into KA and NA Togo (see Heine 1968). Logba is a NA-Togo language in the southernmost cluster with Avatime, Tafi, and Nyagbo which are KATogo languages as her immediate geographical neighbors. The Logba child grows up in a multilingual community but Logba and Ewe have high percentages of speakers. Logba language is used in the home, the chief ’s court and in cultural performances. Church services are conducted mostly in Ewe including announcements. Ewe hymn books and Ewe bibles are used. Ewe is also used in the medical domain when Logba people go to the hospital, since the district hospital is in Hohoe which is an Ewe urban centre. All administrative work is done in Ewe and sometimes in English. The normal order of acquisition for the Logba children is the Logba language first, followed by Ewe and then other languages including English. This is expected because Logba is naturally the language that the child will be exposed to in the home. The Logba child acquires some Ewe in the home before he or she enters school. As parents are aware that Ewe is the lingua Franca, they teach children some routine expressions in Ewe so that they can interact with members from the settler communities who speak this language. Some Ewe is learned as the child grows in the community. Older children attending school where Ewe is spoken usually pass on some of the Ewe phrases they learn at school to the younger ones at home. Children are also likely to hear Ewe when they go to church. Some parents also teach their children Ewe and some English phrases as a preparation for school since for them Ewe and English are the languages used for social interaction in school. There are five primary schools, three junior high schools and one senior high school in Logba. Children speak the Logba language in their homes but Ewe is spoken and used as the de facto medium of instruction in the primary school. From a survey of hundred P1–P3 pupils who are native Logba speakers, it has been observed that while they have very little knowledge of English language they understand and can express themselves in Ewe before they enter school. 103

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Logba towns and villages are located on the trunk road from Accra to Hohoe except Tota which is on the hills. Klikpo, the home of the paramount chief, is situated on a branch road about five kilometres in a low lying area in the hills. In the towns along the Accra-Hohoe road, Ewe settler farmers outnumber the Logba people. Dakubu and Ford (1988: 125) note that “the Logba have the most extensive local contact with Ewe; for example, the Ewes probably now outnumber the Logba on Logba lands . . .” This fact shows up in school enrolment in the towns on the main road. The linguistic composition of the pupils in the classes is not uniform. A recent survey conducted in July 2009 by the researcher to find out the number of native Logba people in the schools in P1- P3 show the following: Akusame has an average of 32%. Adzakoe is 21% and in Alakpeti, the commercial centre of the Logba area which is also on the main road records an average of 30%. This is illustrated in tables 1, 2, and 3 below: Table 1 AKUSAME-VUINTA L.A. PRIMARY CLASS

PUPILS 1

LOGBA PUPILS 2

3

TEACHERS 4

% of Logba Pupils

5

B

G

T

B

G

T

L

NL

P1A & B

18

28

46

7

9

16

1

1

35%

P2A & B

25

20

45

11

7

18

--

1

40%

P3A & B

25

15

40

4

4

8

1

1

20%

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Table 2 ADZAKOE R.C. PRIMARY CLASS

PUPILS

P1

B 19

G 14

P2

13

P3

19

LOGBA PUPILS

TEACHERS

T 33

B 4

G 4

T 8

L --

10

23

3

3

6

--

15

34

1

3

4

--

NL 1 1 1

% of Logba Pupils

24% 26% 12%

Table 3 ALAKPETI E.P. PRIMARY CLASS

PUPILS

P1A & B

B 21

G 26

P2A & B

20

P3A & B

25

LOGBA PUPILS

TEACHERS

T 47

B 7

G 4

T 11

L 1

25

45

6

10

16

1

28

53

8

9

17

0

NL 1 1 2

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% of Logba Pupils

23% 36% 32%

Language Use in Education in Minority Language Areas

Kofi Dorvlo

Klikpo and Tota are the Logba towns which are not on the main road. As one moves from the main road inland for about five kilometres on the sides of the Aya hills one will arrive at Klikpo, a settlement which is the traditional capital and where the seat of the paramount chief is located. An additional drive of about three kilometres to the top of the Aya hills is a settlement called Tota, an Ewe name which translates as the top of the mountain. These two Logba towns have a small settler population. Some chain-saw operators come to this mountainous area only to cut the timber and move to another portion in the mountains. These itinerant workers are not likely to come to these areas with their children who will be enrolled in the schools. A handful of adult nonnative speakers in the town are women who have married indigenous Logbas and have come to settle in the area. As a result the enrolment for native Logba pupils in the schools in both towns is almost 100%. This is shown in the following tables 4 and 5. Table 4 KLIKPO E.P. PRIMARY CLASS

PUPILS B

1

2

LOGBA PUPILS 3

TEACHERS 4

G

T

B

G

T

L

P1

3

7

10

3

7

10

--

P2

5

4

9

5

4

9

--

P3

2

5

7

2

5

7

--

NL 1 1 1

5

% of Logba Pupils

100% 100% 100%

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Table 5.1 TOTA E. P. PRIMARY CLASS

PUPILS

LOGBA PUPILS

TEACHERS

G 14

T 29

B 15

G 14

T 29

L

P1

B 15

P2

17

20

37

17

20

37

--

P3

22

16

38

22

15

37

--

NL

1

% of Logba Pupils

100%

1 1

100% 97%

In Tota, the pupils are all native Logba speakers except one pupil in P3 who is the ward of a teacher in the school. There are two teachers for a class, one a native Logba and the second one a non Logba. The enrol1 2 3 4 5

B refers to Boys. G refers to Girls. T refers to total number of pupils. L refers to the Logba teachers on the staff. NL refers to the Non-Logba teachers on the staff.

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ments of the pupils in Klikpo and the information about the teachers on the staff in Klikpo are unique in a way. All the pupils are native Logba speakers who often encounter some linguistic challenges when they want to express themselves in Ewe. The teachers are non Logba who do not speak the mother tongue of the pupils. Ewe is therefore the language used as the medium of instruction. It is difficult for the teachers to offer explanation of any kind to the pupils in Logba, their mother tongue because of the language barrier between them. A control group of P1-P3 monolingual Ewe speaking pupils in Sokode-Etoe is compared to the pupils in Klikpo. In all the classes in Sokode, the pupils as well as the teachers are native Ewe speakers. Table 6 following illustrates this: Table 6 SOKODE-ETOE E.P. PRIMARY CLASS

PUPILS G 19

EWE PUPILS

T 31

B 12

G 19

TEACHERS

T 31

6

P1

B 12

E 1

P2

11

16

27

11

16

27

1

P3

16

16

32

16

16

32

1

NE

-

7

% of Ewe Pupils

100% 100% 100%

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3. Respondents For the child to be eligible for the study he or she should be in a lower primary school in Logba-Klikpo and Sokode Etoe. Three pupils from Logba-Klikpo E. P. Primary School and a control group from SokodeEtoe E. P. Primary School are selected at random as the respondents in this experiment. Both parents of the pupils from Logba-Klikpo E. P. Primary School are from one of the Logba towns. They are as follows: Anansa Prince 6 years, Ekpor Priscila 7 years and Adorblorsu Mavis 8 years. The pupils selected from Sokode Etoe have both parents from one of the Sokode towns. They are as follows: Dogbey Charles 7 years, Gah Elizabeth 8 years, Nyameke Julius 6 years.

6 7

E refers to the Ewe teachers on the staff. NE refers to the Non-Ewe teachers on the staff.

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4. Method Each of the children is asked to tell the story from the wordless picture book, Frog where are you? (Slobin 2004). The story is told to a group of children of their age. A class teacher, who the children are familiar with in the school, sits next to the child and views the pictures with him or her. The child then tells the story. First, the child looks through the pages to get the gist of the story before it is told. There is a discussion session in the mother tongue of the pupils in Logba-Klikpo. The story the child tells is recorded by the experimenter who then transcribes it for analysis.

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5. Discussion of results In both Klikpo and Sokode, the respondents use simple sentences to narrate the frog story. In Klikpo, the respondents: Anansa Prince (6 years) and Ekpor Priscila (7 years) are not able to express themselves freely in Ewe. They are either not familiar with the names of the characters in the frog story or they are not very conversant with the structures of the language that should be used in a narration of this kind. Adorblorsu Mavis (8 years) is able to perform better than her two classmates but not to the level of the respondents from Sokode. About eighty percent of the sentences they construct start with conjunction ye ‘and’. This conjunction is used in Ewe to join simple clauses but in the sentences these respondents produce this conjunction precedes every simple clause. This structure is repeated artlessly in the story of the respondents. This is attested in the description of one of the respondents: (1) ye and vôvô

m

afi-a

do

ye

ðevi-a

le

mouse-DET

came.out

and

child.DET

be

ye

wo-be

afraid-PROG and ye

atôgolo

ye

ye-a-lia

atia

and 3SG-say LOG-POT-climb tree dzô

and nest.bag fell ‘and the mouse came out and the child was afraid and he wanted to climb the tree and the bee hive fell’ 107

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In a number of cases, the conjunction is preceded by a locative phrase afiya ‘this place’. Adorblorsu Mavis has used the conjunction fairly well and constructed sentences in which the conjunctions join two sentences. She handled a few compound sentences to near perfection and constructed some relative clauses in her response. The respondents from Klikpo are not able to call the names of some of the minor characters in the frog story. They however, call the generic names or manage to give a descriptive label for these characters. The bees in the story are referred to as nudzodzoe ‘flying thing’ by the respondents and adzexe ‘owl’ is called xevi ‘bird’ and beehive is called atôgolo ‘nest.bag’ instead of the Ewe name anyitô ‘bee.nest’. One would have thought that they were not able to identify these animals in the story because the picture book they used in the description is not published in colour. Surprisingly, when the respondents were allowed to discuss the topic in their mother tongue, Logba, there was active, uninhibited participation of all including the other members of the class. All the respondents in Sokode identified the characters by their Ewe names and provided the cultural information about them in a lively discussion after the frog story. This does not mean the first language Ewe speakers in Sokode are perfect in all their expressions in Ewe. Some few grammatical errors are found in the expressions of the respondents but these errors do not affect meaning to a large extent. Sentence (2a) is taken from the version of the frog story by one of the respondents from Sokode. It is ungrammatical. (2b) is the grammatically accepted version of (2a). (2a)*

ðevi-a

lé

nu-blanui

child-DET hold ‘The child is sad.’

thing-sadness

ðevi-a le blanui child-DET hold sadness ‘The child is sad.’ The respondents in Sokode are able to express themselves freely in the narration of the frog story. They vary the sentence structure in a comparatively improved style. The do not sound repetitive as their (2b)

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Klikpo counterparts. One can find a couple of complex sentences— relative clauses, time clauses—in the narration of the respondents from Sokode who are mother tongue users of Ewe. They have not only acquired more structures in the language but are also able to vary the structures depending on what they want to express. However they have not reached the level of an adult native speaker. This is an indication that the respondents from Sokode are native speakers of Ewe. The results point to the fact that the level of Ewe among school children in the lower primary school in Klikpo is not high enough to be used as a medium of instruction. Even the level of Adorblorsu Mavis who has the highest level among the three respondents from Klikpo is yet to reach the competence level that will make her use Ewe to understand other subjects in the curriculum. These respondents from Klikpo can best be described as bilinguals who have to do a mental search in their mother tongue Logba before they express themselves in the second language Ewe. A longitudinal study involving these respondents for a six-year period will bring out the competence levels of the Logba-Klikpo child and make some predictions on whether to use Ewe or Logba as medium of instruction and how long it should be used before shifting to English.

References Andoh-Kumi, K. 1992. An Investigation into Bilingualism and school achievement: The case of Akan-English Bilinguals in Ghana. An unpublished PhD Thesis. Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. Andoh-Kumi, K. 2003. Literacy in the medium of instruction and the quality of the teaching and learning: Evidence from IEQ-II case studies. In An insight into the teaching and learning of languages in contact in West Africa. K.N. Kwofie, A Napon, P.K. Geraldo, D.S.Y. Amuzu and D.D. Kuupole (Eds.) Takoradi: St Francis Press, pp. 90-102. Anyidoho, Akosua and Dakubu, M.E. Kropp. 2008. Indigenous languages, English and an emerging national identity. In Language and national identity in Africa. Andrew Simpson (Ed.) London: Oxford University Press.

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Language Use in Education in Minority Language Areas

Kofi Dorvlo

Boadi, L.K.A. 1994. Linguistic barriers to communication in the modern world. The J.B. Danquah Memorial Lectures. Series no. 27, February 1994. Accra: Goldtype Ltd: Dakubu, M.E. Kropp. 1996. Language and Community. Accra: Ghana Universities Press. Dakubu, M.E. Kropp and Ford, Kevin C. 1988. The Central Togo languages. In The languages of Ghana. M.E. Kropp Dakubu. (Ed.) London: Kegan Paul International, pp. 119-153. Dorvlo, Kofi. 2009. The Orthography of Ewe and Logba: The Role of North German Missionaries. In The Role of Missionaries in the Development of African Languages. K. K. Prah (Ed.) CASAS Book Series No 66. Cape Town: CASAS. Heine, Bernd. 1968. Die Verbreitung und Gliederung der Togorestsprachen. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Lewis, M. Paul (Ed.) (2009) Ethnologue. Languages of the world sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex: SIL international on line version. http: www. ethnologue.com/. consulted 1st August 2009. Nugent, Paul. 2005. A regional melting pot. The Ewe and their neighbours in Ghana and Togo. In The Ewe of Togo and Benin. Benjamin Lawrence (Ed.) Accra: Woeli Publishing Services, pp. 29-43. Owu-Ewie, Charles. 2006. The language policy of education in Ghana: A critical look at the English only language policy of education. In Selected Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. John Mugane (Ed.) Massachusetts: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, pp. 76-85. Slobin Dan I. 2004. The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and the expression of motion events. In Relating events in narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives. S. Strömqvist and L. Verhoeven (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 219-257.

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Abbreviations DET LOG POT PROG

Determiner Logophoric Pronoun Potential Progressive

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The Dilemma of African-American English Identity: A case of African language influence?

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Reginald Akuoko Duah, Abigail Ayiglo and Afua Mmra Blay The case for the origin of African American English (hereafter AAE) is a contentious one. Some linguists have insisted that AAE does not have African influences. Diametrically opposed to this view are the Africanists who postulate that AAE developed as a result of African language influence on English. However, the latter view has suffered in terms of evidence, mainly because linguists who share this opinion have not provided enough evidence from African languages—partly because they are not Africans themselves neither do they speak African languages. This paper supplies some evidence from three Ghanaian Languages—Akan, Ga and Ewe—(and also Ghanaian English) in favour of the Africanists’ view. The evidence is mainly in the form of analogues of various linguistic patterns identified in AAE in the area of syntax, phonology and pragmatics, which have attestations in Ghanaian languages but are lacking in other varieties of English.

Introduction Until quite recently, African American English was considered merely an ‘incorrect’ form of English or simply ‘bad English’. Many recent works by linguists, however, reveal that AAE “has a set system of sounds, system of structure of words, system of sentence structure” which sets AAE apart from American Standard English and other varieties of English in general (Green 2002). Issues regarding the origin of such unique features of AAE have generated a lot of debate among linguists. While some have posited an 111

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influence of Creole languages, others have argued for an influence from other varieties of English. Still other linguists have argued for an African influence on AAE as a language. This paper provides evidence in support of the latter view by demonstrating some striking similarities in the syntax, phonology and pragmatics of AAE and West African languages. In the area of phonology and syntax, we compare AAE to Ghanaian English (GE), a variety of English highly influenced by Ghanaian languages. We are of the view that if both languages are varieties of English influenced by similar kinds of languages, then they should have some similarities. We also compare some speech events between AAE and Ghanaian communities.

1. Syntactic similarities The syntax of AAE has been sufficiently described by many linguists in the past decade (for examples, see Green 2002; Rickford and Rickford 2000). It is usually recognised that many of the well established AAE syntactic forms and constructions (for example, the use of verbal markers be, d n etc.) can be found in other varieties of English (Green 2002: 35). However, Collins et al (2008) have described another syntactic construction which they refer to as ‘resumptive-with’ construction which has not been attested in any variety of English but is conspicuous in AAE. Interestingly, though, analogues of such constructions have been attested in some Ghanaian languages, for example, Akan and Ga. A comparative analysis of the resumptive-with construction in AAE and Akan reveals striking similarities which are difficult to ignore. In their extensive work, Collins et al (2008) analyze the resumptive–with construction as a sub case of the Ass Camouflage Construction (ACC). They outline the distinctive properties of this construction in AAE as follows: • The construction has a prepositional phrase (PP) which is headed by with. • The with-phrase does not contribute to the truth-functional meaning of the whole sentence. • The with-phrase is said with a flatter and lower intonation while the rest of the sentence has normal intonation. • The with-construction does not have comitative interpretation.

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e

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• This construction contains masks such as ass, butt, self or behind. • Thus the resumptive-with has the syntactic frame below DP1 . . . with [DP pronoun1 Adj [NP mask]] The following are some examples of the resumptive-with construction elicited from some African American students. We briefly explain the properties outlined above with these sentences. (1) (2) (3) (4)

She drank all the wine with her drunk self. Why you acting bran’ new with yo’ snow bunny ass? She need to sit down with Lois. She need to sit down with Frank stupid ass.

Sentence (1) above could as well read she drunk all the wine, in which case the with-phrase (i.e. with her drunk self) does not contribute to the truth functional meaning of the sentence. Sentences (3) and (4) differ from (1) and (2) in the sense that the with-phrase DP refers to somebody different from the head of the pre-with DP and therefore evokes a comitative meaning. Thus (3) and (4) are not resumptive-with sentences while (1) and (2) are. As the examples above show, the mask in the construction can be ass, self, butt or behind.

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1.1 Resumptive-with construction in Ghanaian languages The resumptive-with construction discussed in Collins et al. (2008) has analogues in some Ghanaian languages and subsequently in Ghanaian English (which is the variety of English influenced by Ghanaian Languages).1 This paper discusses its analog in Akan. However, before the Akan constructions are compared to the AAE resumptive-with constructions, I look at this in Ghanaian English (GE). The following Ghanaian English sentences are virtually equivalents of some of the sentences presented in Collins et al (2008). It is worth noting that these constructions are not acceptable constructions in Standard English constructions. 1

Agyei-Owusu (2008) has identified and discussed the resumptive- construction in Ga. Her paper adds up to the evidence of similarity between AAE and some Ghanaian Languages.

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(5) (6) (7) (8)

Kofi Dorvlo

She has to go away with her dirty shoes Sit down with your too known body Look at him with his crooked legs Andrew is still chasing the lady with his ugly face.

It is evident that these GE sentences bear the same properties as the AAE resumptive-with constructions. In all the sentences above, there is a phrase headed by with which does not add to the meaning of the sentence. In other words, these sentences still convey the same meaning without the with-phrase. Also, these with-phrases have adjectives which in AAE are masks. The only difference between these sentences and that of AAE is the question of intonation. The GE construction is said with the same intonation. However, the Akan construction from which the GE construction is translated has this varying intonation, just like AAE. This and other properties of the Akan construction are discussed below.

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1.2 Properties of the resumptive-with construction in Akan Following the distinctive properties of the resumptive-with construction as explained in Collins et al (2008), this section seeks to compare the properties of this AAE construction with its analogue in Akan. Firstly, the with-phrase (the PP headed by with) does not contribute to the sentence’s truth-functional meaning. From the examples below, it can be seen clearly that the complete meaning of the sentence lies in the pre-with DP and does not need the with-phrase to make a complete meaning. (9) [Firi ha kô] [ne wo-ho fi] Leave here go with 2SG-REFL dirty ‘Leave here with your dirty body.’ In the above sentence, the phrase ne woho fi ‘with your dirty body’ does not add to the meaning of the sentence. Semantically, it only shows the indignation of the speaker towards the addressee. Thus, the phrase could be suppressed to produce:

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(10) Firi ha kô! Leave here go ‘Leave here!’ Secondly, in Akan as in AAE, the construction has a characteristic intonation. The with-phrase is said with a flatter and lower intonation, while the rest of the sentence is said with normal intonation. Asante has the same intonation as AAE; where there is normal intonation up to the with-phrase, followed by a flatter and lower intonation in producing the with-phrase. For example: (11) [Firi me so] [ne w’ ataadeâ a a-tete] normal

flatter and lower

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leave 1SG top with 2SGPOSSdress that PERF-torn ‘Go away with your tattered dress.’ It must be noted here that in Asante, this construction could be said with a normal intonation throughout. In such a case, the with-phrase is meant to contribute to the truth functional meaning and it would therefore not be a resumptive-with construction. If the above example is said with a flat intonation, it would mean that semantically, the speaker intends to incorporate the fact that the addressee’s dress is tattered into the meaning. In other words, the with-phrase would serve as the reason for the utterance of the pre with-phrase. Similar to AAE, the post-with DP in the Akan construction has a pronominal possessor whose antecedent is a clausemate DP. (12) Kofi1 a-fa aduane no Kofi PERF-take food nan

nyinaa ne

ne1

DEF all

with 3SGPOSS

a akyeakyea.

leg REL crooked ‘Kofi has taken all the food with his crooked leg.’ (13) Dokua1 tae nenam ha ne neho1 kankan. Dokua often walk.RED here with REFL smell ‘Dokua often walks around here with her smelly body.’

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(14) Frema1 Frema se

a-kôdi kônkônsa

PERF-go eat a

bio

gossip

Kofi Dorvlo

ne ne1

again with 3SGPOSS

a-hye.

teeth REL PERF-burn ‘Frema has gone to gossip again with her decayed teeth.’ As is evident in the above sentences, the pronominal possessor is co-referent with the subject (as indicated by the co-indexed subscript numeral1) in the pre-with DP. In other words Kofi in example (12) antecedes the pronominal possessor ne ‘his’. The fifth property has to do with masks. The masks used in the Akan construction are not restricted. They could be body parts (hand, leg, head, face, and buttocks), self, body and other physical possessions unlike AAE where the masks are only ass, self, body, butt, and behind. Again, in Akan the masks could also be intangible and abstract such as attitude and character. The following examples display the use of the different masks: (15) W’-a-sâe me mpaboa ne n’-adwene 3SG-PERF-spoil 1SGPOSS shoe with 3SGPOSS-mind a â-n-yâ

adwuma

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REL 3SG-NEG-do work ‘He has spoilt my shoes with his crazy mind’. (16) Hwâ no ne neho a â-n-yâ fâ Look 3SG with 3SGPOSS PART 3SG-NEG-is nice ‘Look at him with his ugly self ’. Finally, in Akan, there could be a derogatory adjective (‘masks’) in the clause as is also the case in AAE. However, unlike AAE, Akan could have a relative clause performing the same role as would an adjective in this construction in AAE. Here, the relative clause is introduced by a relative clause marker, ‘a’. It is also worth mentioning that where the construction has an adjective, it could take as many adjectives as possible just like in AAE. However, the adjective in the construction could (though rarely) also have a positive meaning as shown in example (17) below.

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(17) ô-pâ sereâ paa ne n’anim fââfâ bi 3SG-like laughter very with 3SGPOSSface beautiful some. ‘She likes laughing very much with her beautiful face’.

1.3 The antecedent of the pronoun in the resumptive-with construction In addition to the properties discussed above, the construction in Akan observes certain constraints on the choice of the antecedent of the pronominal possessor as pertains in the AAE construction. Firstly, in AAE when the antecedent is a subject, it means the person the subject refers to is to an extent responsible for the action. Collins et al (2008:52) explain this with the following examples: (19) He fell down with his stupid ass. (20) Ray gon get arrested with his stupid ass. (21) *He fainted with his hungry ass.

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(22) *He fainted/passed out with his stupid ass. (23) *Clara was born with her stupid face. The sentences (21) to (23) are ungrammatical because the actions coded by the verb cannot be done on the actor’s own volition neither can they be interpreted as actions the subject referent is responsible for. In sentences (19) and (20) however, the actors are responsible for the fall and the arrest respectively. Thus they are acceptable. In Akan, when the subject is the antecedent, the actor assumes a sense of responsibility as is found in AAE. The following example is used to explain the point. (24) ô-a-yare ne ne-ho 3SG-PERF- be.sick with 3SG-REFL ‘He fell sick with his shameful self ’.

aniwuo

shame

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Thus a sentence like this would only imply that the subject referent of the pre-with phrase is responsible for the action coded by the verb. The statement only implies that perhaps the subject has not heeded to advice and has fallen sick. This is the more reason why Akan analogues of examples 21 to 23 are also ungrammatical. The resumptive-with construction in AAE differs a little from the Akan construction in the use of masks. In effect, the general form of the construction in Akan can be given as: DP…with [DP pronoun1 Adj[NP mask]] / DP…with[DP Pronoun[Relative Clause]] where the relative clause functions as a mask. The existence of such a construction in Akan is a clear indication that African languages had some sort of strong influence on the acquisition of English by the slaves resulting in AAE.

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1.4 Genitive marking Another interesting feature of AAE that has semblance in Ghanaian languages, especially Akan, is the absence of an overt possessive marker on either the possessed or the possessum in the possessive construction. Although in Akan, there is possessive marker, ‘ne’, it is usually omitted in colloquial speech. According to Rickford and Rickford (2000), AAE forms the possessive construction with the juxtaposition of both nouns where the possessor precedes the possessed. Though due to the influence of Standard English, some use the possessive 's' as in Standard English, the greater majority form the possessive just by juxtaposition of the nouns. In fact, a research carried out by Tinky and Foxy (presented in Rickford and Rickford 2000) reveals that between fifty-three and eighty-six percent of teenagers use the possessive construction without the genitive marker ’s. This is perfectly demonstrated in Akan. Thus, in both languages, the use of a morphological possessive marker can be dropped as can be observed in the following examples. AAE2 1. This one day, Nito came over to that girl house. ‘This one day, Nito came over to that girl's house.’ 2

Example 1 is taken from Rickford and Rickford (2000: 112) while 2-4 are given in Green (2002:102).

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2.

3. 4. Akan 5.

6.

Kofi Dorvlo

I always get bites cause we be hanging out at my mama house. ‘I always get bites because we usually hang out at my mama’s house.’ Sometimes Rolanda bed don’t be made up. ‘Sometimes Rolanda’s bed isn’t made up’ That’s the church responsibility. ‘That’s the church’s responsibility.’ Papa no nsuo a-sa Father DEF water PERF-finish ‘The man’s water is finished.’ Kofi krataa Kofi paper ‘Kofi’s paper.’

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1.5 Multiple Negation The feature multiple negation is a prominent one in AAE. It is one of the significant and celebrated indicators that a particular utterance is AAE. Most Americans use it even when they are not speaking AAE. It is even more interesting to note that this feature is inherent in Ghanaian Pidgin English. One would wonder whether the presence of this feature in Ghanaian Pidgin is as a result of African American influence. It is obvious that this feature cannot be a transfer from AAE because GPE is actually a variety of English influenced by Ghanaian indigenous languages. This means that indigenous languages contribute to the structure of GPE. Double negation is also present in Akan. Akan 1. Me-a-n-nya 1SG PERF-NEG-get

hwee

a-m-ma

nothing

CONS-NEG-give

no

3SGOBJ ‘I did not get anything for him.’

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In the example 1 above, hwee ‘nothing’ which is negative occurs with the negative marker n-. The AAE examples below (from Green 2002: 77) exhibit the use of multiple negations in AAE. 2. Bruce don’t want no teacher telling him nothing about books. 3. I sure hope it don’t be no leak after they finish. Apart from the features discussed above, there are some other features that are similar in AAE and some Ghanaian languages worth mentioning here. These include the absence of the third person singular agreement marker -s on the verb. Unlike Standard English which marks an -s at the verb, AAE drops this marker -s. Tinky and Foxy’s research (as reported by Rickford and Rickford 2000) brings to the fore that the following sentences are regular sentences that will be used fifty-six to seventy-six percent of the time in AAE. AAE 4. When he come down here I be done talking to him (Green 2002: 35). ‘When he comes down here, I have usually already talked to him.’ For many Kwa languages, there is no overt verb-person agreement in the clause just as found in some AAE constructions (for example in 4 above). The absence of agreement marking can be found in the Ga and Akan examples in 5 and 6. Ga biâ daagbi 5. e-ba-a 3SG-come-HAB here everyday ‘He comes here everyday.’ Akan 6. ô-nante ntântâm dodo 3SGSUBJ-walk fast much ‘He/she walk too fast.’ The absence of third person singular marking on verbs in AAE and Kwa languages, signal an important relationship between AAE and African languages which cannot be overemphasised. It can be argued that this feature of AAE is a transfer from African languages rather than just a coincidence.

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2. Phonological similarities Linguistic evidence of African language influence on AAE is apparent in some phonological similarities between AAE and Ghanaian English3. The phonological similarities discussed in this paper include consonant cluster reduction, consonant replacement and metathesis.

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2.1 Consonant cluster reduction Consonant cluster reduction is a phonological feature in which one consonant (or more) in a consonant cluster is dropped. Standard American English (SAE) has a number of words which have consonant clusters in word final positions. AAE and Ghanaian English speakers, however, drop the final consonant of some words with such clusters (Green 2002). Below are some examples of words from a number of literary works written in AAE in which the final consonants of some words are dropped. 1. Thought you tole me you wuz hungry (Hurston 1937:3) ‘Thought you told me you were hungry.’ 2. Jes lak wid her Easter dress on (Hurston 1937:98) ‘Just like with her Easter dress on.’ 3. I thank God I am free at las (Randall 2006:5) ‘I thank God I am free at last.’ However, the final consonants of words like paint and jump are not dropped in AAE. Two separate accounts have been employed to explain the prevalence of this phonological phenomenon in AAE. These are the phonological accounts and the African origin view (Green 2002).

2.2 The phonological account/voicing generalisation This account is of the view that the presence of consonant cluster reduction in AAE is as a result of a purely phonological process and should 3

The data on AAE came mainly from Rickford and Rickford (2000) and Green (2002). Other literary texts written in the language were also used. Data for Ghanaian English were collected through interviewing Ghanaian English speakers with relatively low levels of education. Research papers presented by our colleagues from our Pidgins and Croeles class were also consulted.

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therefore be explained as such. In this view, this phonological process can be explained with a rule that states that the final consonant of a word be deleted if both sounds have the same voicing value. However, if the consonants in the cluster have different voicing values, both consonants in the cluster are retained. The following phonological rules illustrate this phonological phenomenon. a. C1 C2 A C1 ⁄ —# [+voice1][+voice2] A [+voice1] ⁄ — # b. C1 C2 A C1 ⁄ —# [-voice1][-voice2] A [-voice1] ⁄ — # Thus, told is pronounced tol because, /l/ and /d/ are both voiced sounds. On the contrary, in words like jump and paint, the clusters mp and nt are retained because the clusters are made up of voiced and voiceless sounds respectively. The nagging question however is: why is this phenomenon absent in Standard English? Again, why do other dialects of English not display this process? We propose that the answers to the questions can be found by comparing AAE and varieties of English influenced by African languages like Ghanaian English.

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2.3 The African origin view The African origin view claims that consonant cluster reduction originates from West African languages which generally lack final consonant clusters (Green 2002). For example, West African languages like Akan, Ewe and Ga, lack consonants clusters in word final positions. Thus AAE speakers, like their African ancestral speech communities, drop the final consonants of some clusters occurring in word final positions? The question however remains: why do AAE speakers reduce consonant clusters of some words and in only word final positions? It is in our quest to seek answers to this question that revealed the striking resemblance of the phenomenon in Ghanaian English and AAE. Like AAE, Ghanaian English speakers drop the final consonant in consonant clusters when both sounds occurring in the cluster in the final word position have the same voicing value. The examples below collected from AAE (Green 2002) and Ghanaian English speakers yielded the same results. 122

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Examples: SAE AAE post pos mask mas last las band ban friend frien

Kofi Dorvlo

Ghanaian English pos mas las ban frien

2.4 Similarities shared by Ghanaian English and AfricanAmerican English The following paragraphs discuss the similarities shared between AAE and GE. These striking features provide strong evidence that AAE could have developed from African languages.

2.4.1 Sociolinguistic influence

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According to Rickford and Rickford (2000), phonological features in AAE are also dependant on an underlying sociological factor. Thus among AAE speakers, consonant cluster reduction is common among the working class and speakers with lower levels of education. That is, speakers who have a relative high level of education do not usually drop their final consonants. This factor also holds in Ghanaian English. With regard to position, consonant reduction seems to occur at only word final positions in both AAE and GE.

2.4.1 Deletion of liquids GE speakers would generally drop liquids when they occur after vowels. Interestingly, a similar phenomenon happens in AAE. The deletion of liquids contradicts the voicing generalisation since the first consonant is dropped and the final consonant is retained instead. Ghanaian English mik ‘milk’

AAE help

bet fim

cot

‘belt’ ‘film’

‘hep’ (Rickford and Rickford 2000: 103) ‘court’ (Green 2002: 120)

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We therefore agree with the African origin view that the presence of consonant reduction in AAE is as a result of influence from African languages (with specific reference to Ghanaian English). Although the phonological account of this feature in AAE explains the phenomenon using the voicing generalization, it advertently, makes an argument for an African influence. This is because the voicing generalization tends to augment why there is consonant reduction in an African language influenced variety of English like the Ghanaian English; it is not a counter explanation. It rather explains why some consonants are dropped and others are not.

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2.5 Consonant replacement Another phonological feature that is unique to AAE speakers is consonant replacement. In this phonological feature, one consonant sound is replaced with another (Green 2002; Rickford and Rickford 2000). Here, AAE speakers replace the dental fricatives, /ð/ and /e/ with the alveolar and labiodental stops, /t, d, f, v/. Our investigations revealed an overwhelming resemblance between what AAE and Ghanaian English do. In both languages, the phenomenon is very systematic rather than haphazard. In this phenomenon, speakers of both languages replace the voiceless dental fricative, /e / occurring in word final positions with the voiceless alveolar plosive, /t/, the voiceless labia-dental fricative /f/ or voiced alveolar stop /d/. Where it occurs at word initial position, it is, however, replaced with a voiceless alveolar plosive /t/. Examples: SAE AAE Ghanaian English ‘cloth’ [klôf ] [klôf ] ‘bath’ [baf ] [baf ] ‘mouth’ [maf ] [maf ] ‘with’ [wid] or [wit] [wit] or [wif ] ‘thank’ [tæåk] [taåk] ‘think’ [tiåk] [tiåk] Furthermore, at word initial positions, speakers of both languages replace the voiced dental fricative, /ð/ with the voiced alveolar stop /d/ 124

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SAE AAE Ghanaian English ‘this’ [dis] [dis] ‘that’ [dat ] [dat] In AAE, however, the voiced fricative / ð/ can be replaced with the voiced labiodental fricative /v/. Thus, mother is realized as [mv va]. Consonant replacement is present in both AAE and GE because they have been highly influenced by African languages and Ghanaian language respectively, languages which lack dental fricatives / e / and / ð/ altogether.

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2.6 Metathesis In this phenomenon, during pronunciation, there is switching of consonants (usually) at a word final position. Perhaps this is done in order to achieve easy articulation (Rickford and Rickford 2002). This phenomenon is also common in GE. In both AAE and GE, the phenomenon is common amongst the speakers of the lower working class and speakers who have relatively low level of education. Examples: SAE AAE/Ghanaian English ask aks flask flaks desk deks risk riks task taks Interestingly, this feature is absent among Standard American English speakers. The question therefore arises that, if this feature is absent in SAE, then how come AAE speakers have this phenomenon? Thus, in the above examples, the positions of the consonants clusters in the word final positions are interchanged. It can be concluded therefore that metathesis in AAE could well signal an African language influence as demonstrated in the case of Ghanaian English. Consonant cluster reduction, metathesis, and consonant replacement are common phonological features in AAE and Ghanaian English. These features are equally common in other new ‘Englishes’ like Nigerian English (which are highly influenced by African languages) but absent in 125

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Standard American or British English. Thus these phonological features add to the evidence to the view that AAE had influence from African languages.

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3. Speech events and verbal/oral gestures Research on African American English, over the years, has largely concentrated on identifying and explaining mainly syntactic and phonological patterns exhibited in the language. However, as Green (2002:134) notes, “syntactic and phonological patterns alone cannot sufficiently characterize AAE. Speech events and rules of interaction displayed in AAE folklore and oral tradition systems are actively employed in everyday language usage. Green (2002) lists about six speech events and verbal strategies used by speakers of AAE. The speech events include signifying, playing the dozens, marking, loud talking, rapping and woofing. Figueroa and Patrick (2002) and Rickford and Rickford (1999) also show other oral gestures, suck-teeth or kiss-teeth and cut-eye, as being employed in AAE and largely in the creoles on the Caribbean Islands (for example Jamaica, Tobago, Guyana, Barbados and others). The literature abounds with a fair description of these speech events and communicative strategies and how they are carried out in AAE. However, even though many West African languages display much the same communicative strategies, few attempts have been made at showing the relationship between AAE and West African languages in particular. Below, we consider in brief, some communicative strategies; particularly kiss-teeth, cut eye, playing the dozens and loud talking and demonstrate how these verbal strategies and oral gestures are carried out in some Ghanaian languages. The striking similarities between how AAE and Ghanaian languages exhibit these communicative strategies is hard to ignore and plausibly constitute evidence of African languages influence on AAE.

3.1 Kiss-teeth (suck-teeth) Kiss-teeth or suck-teeth is an oral gesture used to indicate disdain or disapproval in AAE (and some Creole languages). Figueroa and Patrick (2002: 1) define kiss-teeth (also KST) as 126

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an inherently evaluative and inexplicit oral gesture with a soundsymbolic component, and remarkably stable set of functions across the Diaspora: an interactional resource with multiple possibilities for sequential organization, often used to negotiate moral positioning among speakers and referents, and closely to community norms and expectations of conduct and attitude.

Kiss-teeth is articulated by a velaric ingressive airstream involving a velar closure and another closure forward in the oral cavity either at the alveolar, palate or dental. The sound produced is a click which usually lasts for some few seconds (but can also be extended into several seconds) to indicate varying degrees of disgust or contempt. The higher the pitch of the sound, the stronger the negative effect it connotes and vice-versa. Interestingly, among the Akans, Ga and Ewe (to name a few) of Ghana, this practice is far from novel. In Akan kiss-teeth is referred to as atwee or atwoo and Ewe labels the gesture as tsedudu. KST is generally used by females both in the languages of Ghana and also in AAE. In Akan for instance, mothers use the gesture to signal their disgust or disdain of an act done by their children. Young women also use kiss-teeth to signal moral position and attitude on a set situation by usually yielding very high and extended versions of the gesture which may be followed by a turning of the head in another direction. Some linguists have speculated that kiss-teeth could well have been derived from Spanish or Portuguese but the evidence from West African languages are overwhelming and seem more plausible for the following reasons. First, even though KST is a widespread phenomenon among AAE speakers (African Americans), the general White American population is reported to be completely unaware of the act and its significance (Figueroa and Patrick 2002; Rickford and Rickford 1976). Again, other dialects of English are not known to use KST even though the gesture is eminently conspicuous in AAE. This fact is insightful, because one would expect that since African Americans and White Americans have extensive contact, by and large, White Americans would be at least familiar with the practice but it is apparent that this gesture (like many others) are exclusively claimed and used only by the African American community for specific reasons. Also, the fact that KST is not attested in other varieties of English signal an important departure of AAE from 127

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these other dialects and a close association with West African languages. The abundance of evidence of various forms of kiss-teeth from African languages—for example Gambian Krio, Atlantic, Mande, and BenueCongo (Igboid and Yoruboid) as well as Bantu languages—give credence to its African origins. Thus it can be concluded that “the African origin of the gesture (kiss-teeth) seems secure” and uncontroversial (Figueroa and Patrick 2002: 7).

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3.2 Cut-eye Cut-eye is a visual gesture identified as widely employed by AAE speakers (Rickford and Rickford 1976; Figueroa and Patrick 2002; Green 2002). This visual gesture can also be found in many Ghanaian languages like Akan, Ga and Ewe. Akan anikyibuo/anikyie ‘the art of breaking the back of the eye’ Ga o-kpâ-mi ‘you cut-eye me’ Ewe treåku ‘seal eyes’ Rickford and Rickford (1976: 296) define cut-eye as “a visual gesture which communicates hostility, displeasure, disapproval, or a general rejection of the person at whom it is directed.” Cut-eye is effected by staring or glaring sternly for a moment at a person and quickly turning the head (and sometimes the whole body) in another direction. It can be done by facing the person to whom it is directed sideways in which case the performer stares in the corner of the eyes and rolls back the eyes (usually together with his/her body) to its normal position. This gesture is not simply ‘rolling of the eyes’. Rather, cut-eye is a complex system of momentarily staring at someone followed by a ‘braking’ or ‘cutting’ of the eyes as shown in Fig 1. Cut-eye can also be followed by kiss-teeth which would signal the intensity of hostility and displeasure being expressed. Interestingly, cut-eye, like kiss-teeth, is usually associated with women rather than men in both in African American and Ghanaian languages communities (Rickford and Rickford 1976).

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Fig 1. Sequence of movements in a cut-eye (Rickford and Rickford 1976)

Cut-eye is used to negotiate one’s moral position because it violates what Goffman (1972) refers to as an individual’s “information preserve.” This ‘preserve’ of the individual refers to their territorial autonomy— “their right not to be stared at or examined” (Goffman 1972). Thus, a cut-eye amounts to a deliberate encroachment on one’s territory or preserve and therefore signals an attack which may receive a counteraction. The final stage of the gesture (rolling back the eyes and the body) adds another element to the visual assault; after a brief visual examination of the person being stared at, the performer finds him/her no longer worthy of examination and attention and therefore shifts his/her attention completely from the ‘unworthy’ persona. Rickford and Rickford (1976) report that while most African Americans interviewed were familiar with the gesture and could describe it (thirty-three out of thirty-five), White Americans seemed largely unaware of the existence of the act (only four out of thirty-five had heard of it) showing the widespread nature of the gesture among the African American community. Again, other dialects do not replicate this gesture signalling its uniqueness in helping linguists delineate the relationship between AAE and other varieties of English in terms of other language influence on the variety. Cut-eye has been shown as one of the African “survivals” in the New World. Even though linguists are not unanimous on the exact African language from which the act originated, Rickford and Rickford (1976: 301) indicate that “this problem is not always as critical as it might seem, because as many observers have noted, many New World Africanisms go back to generalized features of West Africa, even of sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.” 129

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3.3 Signifying and playing the dozens As some linguists have pointed out, AAE has a rich pragmatic system which has in its stock many speech events such as signifying, playing the dozens, marking, loud talking, woofing etc. (see Green 2002 for list of speech events) which are used by speakers to entertain and communicate meaning. One of these speech events is “playing the dozens” or simply “the dozens.”4 According to Steels II (2009),

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The dozens is an element of the African American oral tradition in which two competitors, usually males, go head to head in a competition of often good-natured, ribald ‘trash talk’. They take turns insulting—‘cracking’, ‘west coast dissin’, or ‘ranking’ on—one another, their adversary’s mother or other family member until one of them has no comeback.

Thus in this game, a speaker tries to ‘conquer’ his/her opponent by raining down insults with sexual innuendos particularly about an opponent’s family member (usually the opponent’s mother). In Ga this game is referred to as lashimô which literally translates ‘to tease’. Remarkably, this verbal duel is usually carried out among young males both in Ga and AAE. The ultimate aim of contestants in lashimô is to outdo their opponents by delivering the wittiest and most insulting lines which would receive applause and cheers from the audience. Contestants can base insults on obesity, incest, hygiene, stupidity, unattractiveness, poverty, or age. The lines below exemplify playing the dozens and lashimô in AAE and Ga respectively. Examples: Playing the dozens AAE (source: ) 1. Yo mama’s so fat, her driver’s license says: “Picture continued on other side.” 2. Yo momma’s so poor she can’t even pay attention. Ga (source: Vanderpuije 2008) 3. O nyâ da aa-hu akâ kâ e nyiâ lâ e diådaa tamô dôkôdôkô you mother fat so-much that when she walk and she waddle like duck ‘Your mother is so fat, when she walks she waddles like a duck.’ 4

See Lefever (1981) for a detailed discussion on "the dezens."

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4.

Kofi Dorvlo

O mami da aa-hu akâ Gucci kâ Prada ni kpâo opioto haa bo

you mother fat so-much that Gucci and Prada that sew drawers give you ‘Your mother is so fat that Gucci and Prada had to sew you some customized drawers.’ According to Saloy (1998), “the dozens” was devised by African slaves to ‘toughen’ themselves against the inhumane treatment that was meted to them by resorting to insulting themselves and the name ‘dozens’ issues from the event that slaves who had ‘defects’ and therefore sold at the cheapest price were organized into dozens. According to this view, ‘the dozens’ was developed by slaves as a form of aggression displacement such that instead of confronting their ‘real’ enemies (the white slave owners), they displaced that anger and aggression on themselves (Lefever 1981). This view however fails to address some fundamental questions such as why men and not women are associated with ‘the dozens’ if the development or invention of the game was a form of indirection. This question is worth examining because almost all forms of indirection are invented and predominantly used by women hence there is little or no reason to expect ‘the dozens’ to constitute such a stark exception. With this analysis it becomes quite clear that ‘the dozens’ was not meant to be a form of indirection initially but was a game played mainly by young males perhaps to help them to endure or tolerate unsavoury comments about people they cared about in order to preserve harmony, as displayed in African languages like Ga. It can be argued that since these were slaves from Africa and had knowledge of African languages and the various speech events which include this verbal duel, they reintroduced a game to serve this new purpose of diffusing anger and aggression that issued from oppression and maltreatment. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that essential elements of the game such as its preamble ‘yo/your mama’, its participants, audience participation, and the topic areas of insults such as poverty, obesity, and unattractiveness, remain unchanged and standard. The fact that playing the dozens originated from Africa has been pointed out by many linguists (for example Simmons 1963; Dandy 1991; Smitherman 1995). Simmons (1963) traces the act to West African origins especially in Efik tone riddles, curses, stereotyped sar131

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casm and retort to curses. Simmons (1963: 340) states concerning the culture of African Americans that “West African folkloristic retentions are definitely known to have occurred and it may well be that from the folkloristic background brought with them from Africa, the American Negroes have fashioned new forms to satisfy new needs.” Thus, a careful examination of the ‘dozens’ reveals African language influence on AAE which is hard to ignore. In discussing the verbal and oral strategies employed in African American English, it becomes increasingly clear that a description of AAE in terms of syntax and phonology alone is highly inadequate and insufficient because such a description leaves out systems employed in social negotiation and interaction. Therefore an account of the influence of other languages on AAE must necessarily consider the origins of these ‘non exotic’ forms. The search would reveal that cut-eye, kiss-teeth and playing the dozens are clearly ‘Africanisms’ which have been preserved in languages of the New World (AAE and Caribbean Creoles). As we have shown, many of these strategies are superbly replicated in many West African languages such that one cannot be agnostic of the relationship between these languages and AAE. African descendant populations in the New World in general have relied on these linguistic strategies (oral, visual and verbal) to create distinct language identities amidst the general White population. Ignoring the African language origins of these linguistic strategies is, therefore, tantamount to denying their significance and rich cultural history in AAE. Thus, the influence of African languages on AAE transcends structurally organized forms in syntax and phonology and is exhibited in AAE pragmatics.

Conclusion The discussion above has presented striking linguistic similarities between AAE and some Ghanaian languages. These similarities give crucial evidence to support the view that AAE, as a variety of English, has its outstanding features mostly originating from African languages. The features discussed in this paper and the demonstrated similarities between AAE and some Ghanaian languages have been shown to be systematic rather than coincidental. Additional evidence of this claim 132

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can be found in the resemblance between Ghanaian English and AAE. Many of the syntactic, phonological and pragmatic features discussed in this paper have been shown to be unique to AAE as a variety of English and therefore constitute a departure of the language from other standard western varieties of English. Interestingly, these unique features discussed have been shown to have their origins in African languages. While this paper does not in anyway claim an African language influence for all the features of AAE, we are convinced that a closer examination of some of the unique syntactic, phonological and pragmatic phenomena of AAE would unmistakably yield evidence in support of African language influence on AAE.

References Copyright © 2010. Sub-Saharan Publishers. All rights reserved.

Collins, Chris, Simanique Moody and Paul Moody. 2008. An AAE Camouflage Construction. Language 84(1): 29-68. Dandy, Evelyn. 1991. Black Communications: Breaking the Barriers. Chicago: African American Images. Figueroa, Esther and Peter L. Patrick. 2001. The Meaning of Kiss-Teeth. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 35: 48-84. Goffman, Erving. 1972. Relations in Public. New York: Harper Colophon. Green, Lisa. 2002. African American English: A Linguistics Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hurston, Zora Neale. 1937. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper and Row. Lefever, H. 1981. Playing the Dozens: A Mechanism for Social Control. Phylon 42: 73-85. Randall, Dudley. 2006. The Black Poet. New York: Batman BooksRickford.

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Rickford, John Russell and Rickford, Russell John. 2000. Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. New York: John Wiley. Rickford, John R. and Rickford, Angela. 1976. Cut-eye and Suck-teeth: African Words and Gestures in New World Guise. Journal of American Folklore 89: 294-309. Saloy, Mona Lisa. 1999. African American Oral Traditions in Louisiana. Louisiana Division of the Arts. http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/ creole_art_african_am_oral.html [Accessed July 29, 2009]. Simons, Donald. 1963. Possible West African Sources for the American Negro ‘Dozens’. Journal of American Folklore. 76: 339-340. Smitherman, Geneva. 1995. If I’m Lyin’, I’m Flyin’: An Introduction to the Art of the Snap. In: J. Percelay, D. Dweck and M. Ivey (Eds.). Double Snaps. New York: Morrow. Steels II, Tyrone. 2009. Playing the Dozens. The Moderate Voice. http://themoderatevoice.com/27376/playing-the-dozens-pundit-edition/ [Accessed: July 29, 2009].

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Abbreviations 1 2 3 AAE COM CONS DEF DP NEG PART PERF PLU POSS PROG PP REL REFL SG SAE

First person Second person Third person African American English Comitative Consecutive Definite marker Determiner phrase Negative Particle Perfect Plural Possessive Progressive Prepositional phrase Relative clause marker Reflexive Singular Standard American English

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Constructing a National Language

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Constructing a National Language as a Vehicle for National Identity 1

Richmond Kwesi

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It has been postulated by researchers that a national language can be developed or attained in a multicultural and multilingual society like Ghana. The two commonly resorted ways of attaining a national language in a nation are the dominance method and the natural method. However, these two methods seem not to be the most satisfactory ways of attaining a national language in Ghana. In this paper, I argue that a national language can be constructed by incorporating and merging certain elegant elements, vocabulary and structures in the various regional and ethnic languages into one whole new language as the national language. This method, which can be referred to as the synthesis method, seeks to combine the common phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic structures in the various languages and dialects into a new language for all.

Introduction Language is a symbol of social identity with which speakers in a community can identify themselves as one people having a common goal and aspiration. It is the main element by which the culture and ideas of a people are expressed. A national language is usually one of the indigenous languages of the people elevated to a national status which represents the main common language of the people in a society. The 1

Several people have given me their helpful comments on this paper. I must especially thank Dr. Nana Aba Amfo for her insightful comments which have led to this revised form of the paper I presented at the colloquium. I must also thank Prof. Helen Lauer for influencing my thinking in this and other papers.

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national language of a country is an element of the identity of the people. In other words, a nation can be distinctly recognized through its national language. Various languages and dialects may be spoken in the regional and ethnic groupings in the nation, however, the national language supersedes these regional and ethnic languages and it is the language that readily portrays the identity of the whole people. Language embodies the culture and philosophy of a people. The national language of a nation is, thus, the language that projects the customs, conventions, morality and philosophy of that nation to the rest of the world. There is evidence to indicate that it is possible to achieve or develop a national language in a heterogeneous multicultural and multilingual society. South Africa alone has about eleven national languages amidst other regional and ethnic languages and dialects. Tanzania has Swahili as the national language though it has several languages and dialects. Therefore, it is practicable to have a national language in Ghana which has over forty different languages.

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1. Methods of language construction One of the ways of attaining a national language is termed the natural method. This strategy allows all the languages in the country to develop separately and independently until one of them ultimately and undeniably emerges as the most dominant, which is then elevated to a national status. Advocates of this method argue that when the various languages and dialects of a nation are allowed to develop independently without the state’s interference, there will come a time when one of the languages will become naturally, over time, the most dominant economically, demographically and geographically. The dominant language might be identified as the one with the largest number of speakers, or as the most prestigious. This dominant language might then be chosen as the national language without inciting any dissension from the public. In the case of Ghana, it is unlikely that this method may help us to attain a national language. Increased education in the various regional languages coupled with the usage of the various regional and ethnic languages in the mass and print media has made it unlikely for one of the languages or dialects to be the most dominant in the foreseeable future. 136

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Should one of the regional languages dominate the others in terms of economic power and prestige, it is very unlikely that non-speakers of that language would pledge allegiance to it if chosen as the national language. These difficulties inherent in the natural method have yielded some people favouring the dominance method. The dominance method is to foster and nurture one of the dominant languages to be elevated to the status of a national language. A conscious effort is made by the state by setting up an institution or statutory body mandated to develop this dominant language as the national language of the nation. In other cases, two or more of these dominant indigenous languages are chosen and developed as national languages with various roles in terms of usage in the country. The dominance method may also not be ideal as it might spark up disagreements as to which of the dominant regional or ethnic languages should be chosen as the national language. The language which gets chosen as the national language may be deemed in the eyes of non-speakers of that language as being politically motivated. Hence, the language chosen, may not gain the necessary allegiance and prestige that it should deserve. In this paper, I argue that there is another way of attaining a national language. This alternative way is to construct a national language out of the existing regional and ethnic languages. Certain elegant and common phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic elements in the various ethnic and regional languages are incorporated and merged into one language which would serve as the national language. It would be a language created out of the various languages in the nation. This national language would be characterised by code-mixings punctiliously and systematically arranged. This form of constructing a national language would be healthy to the socio-political situation in the country, as everyone would hear his or her own mother tongue in the national language. It would not be a totally different imperial language which is merely imposed on everyone. The language constructed this way would be a Ghanaian language encompassing the various languages and dialects in the country. This implies that it would not be a regional or ethnic language but a language for all. It is remarkable to note that in this form of language, there would be no extinction of languages though the national one would have dominance over the various local languages. 137

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People would still speak their local languages in their small communities but the national language would be a union of these local languages spoken extensively at all corners of the nation. The national language carefully constructed this way would also embody elegant aspects of the cultures of the various ethnic and social groups in the nation. In this way, it would be a catalyst for national identity. People would tend to have a positive attitude to all languages and come to the realization that all the languages are equally important. The national language would also allow people to appreciate the semantic and syntactic structures that exist in other languages other than their own. This method of constructing a national language from the existing local languages is what I term as the synthesis method. The language constructed by the synthesis method would be a unified whole language resulting from the combinations of the various vocabularies and structures in the local languages. The language resulting from the synthesis method is not necessarily an artificial language but a social construct for the purposes of fostering national cohesion and solidarity amongst the citizens of the nation.

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2. Unification, linguistic synthesis, and Pidgins There seems to be a link between an ethnic or regional language and the unity of the speakers of that particular language in Ghana. A strong tie or bond usually exists amongst speakers of a particular dialect or language of a specific area or community. These local languages are one of the main elements of solidarity and unity that has given rise to high indications of ethnic or tribal cohesion rather than a national one. Though English serves as a perfect tool of communication across regional and ethnic barriers, it does not seem to create a bond of unity and solidarity amongst the citizens of the country partly because it is not one of our own; it is not an indigenous language with an inherent binding force. By extrapolation, we can postulate that a national language constructed by the synthesis method could have a binding force to unify all the ethnic groups and languages under one common, socially constructed, indigenous language. Apart from the unifying effect of this national language, it would serve as a basic element of national identity. Marks of national identity such 138

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as collective belongingness and national solidarity could be portrayed by a national language constructed through this synthesis method. As the German language is to the people of Germany and the French language is to France so the newly constructed Ghanaian language would be a mark that would identify the people of Ghana. A language created via the synthesis method may be likened to a Pidgin. According to Sebba (1997) Pidgins result from the communicative strategies of adults who already have a native command of at least one language. He explains that Pidgins could be called auxiliary languages as “they are needed by their speakers in addition to their own native languages, to bridge a communicative gap with speakers of some other language” (1997: 14). A language created by the synthesis method like a Pidgin or Creole could serve as a second language or a lingua franca intended to bridge communication gaps among speakers of different languages. However, a language created by the synthesis method is unlike a Pidgin in the sense that a Pidgin accumulates incidentally through many informal episodes of communication, whilst a language created by the synthesis method is a conscious and deliberate construction out of existing languages. In addition, whilst a Pidgin is usually formed to bridge communication barriers, a language created by the synthesis method does more than bridge communication barriers; it serves as a tool for cultural and national cohesion, solidarity, and prestige. The national language created by the synthesis method is a language proper and not merely an ‘imperfect’ form of two or more languages.

3. Esperanto In a bid to facilitate communication among different lands and cultures, the synthesis method was employed in the creation of Esperanto. According to Urban (1999) Esperanto is an international auxiliary language devised in 1887 by Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917), a Jewish ophthalmologist, under the pseudonym of ‘Doktoro Esperanto’. Zamenhof originally called the language ‘La Internacia Lingvo’ (The International Language), but it soon became known as Esperanto, which means ‘the one who hopes’. A large number of Esperanto’s vocabulary 139

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comes from Latin and Romance languages (especially French), Germanic languages (German and English), and the rest comes mainly from Slavic languages (Russian and Polish) and Greek (mostly scientific terms). It was meant to serve as a neutral language which could be used among speakers who did not understand each other’s native language. Zamenhof ’s goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding. Even though Esperanto currently has a fairly large number of speakers in some parts of Europe, no country has adopted the language officially. According to the Wikipedia encyclopaedia, Esperanto has not achieved its intended aim of serving as an international language partly because it has been perceived as being ‘European’ without incorporating Asian or African languages. In addition, Esperanto has not been promoted by most European countries because of the progress and development of individual languages such as English in the international terrain. With English being the most widely spoken international language by non-native speakers of English, it has been argued that it would be inappropriate to promote Esperanto at the expense of the English language. Another reason that accounted for the decline of Esperanto, according to the Wikipedia encyclopaedia, was Hitler’s pronouncement that Esperanto could be used as an ‘International Jewish Conspiracy’ once the Jews achieved domination which led to the execution of Esperantists during the holocaust. The difficulties that crippled the growth of Esperanto could be mitigated in the construction of a national language using the synthesis method in Ghana. Esperanto was not adopted officially by any country because it was a conglomeration of vocabularies from languages of different countries. The Ghanaian language to be constructed by the synthesis method would not consist of national or official languages of other countries but indigenous languages in one nation. This feature would thereby promote allegiance to such a language due to the fact that we all belong to one nation. It is possible that due to demographic differentials, particular languages with large populations like Akan or Ga could dominate in their contributions of vocabularies in the national language; but this would not necessarily result in tagging the national language as Akan or Ga, since a meticulous effort would be made to 140

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ensure the representation of a large number of elements of each language in the national language regardless of the size of the native speaking subpopulations. Furthermore, the Ghanaian language to be constructed by the synthesis method would not be the work of any individual but a group of specialists with expertise drawn from the various ethnic and regional groupings in the nation. This would ensure that there was neither discrimination against nor favouritism of one language over another.

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4. Evidence of the synthesis method The synthesis method of attaining a national language is practicable due to certain evidence that shows its viability. All the languages in Ghana belong to the Kwa and Gur branches of the Niger-Congo language family. This means that languages in Ghana to some extent share certain common phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures that could aid such a synthesis. For instance it is obvious that Nzema and Akan share very many common semantic and syntactic structures due to the fact that they belong to the Central Tano sub-group of the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Hence as ‘sister languages’, it would be easy to outline some of their shared traits in order to recognise most of the common words that are found in them. Asante and Akwapem are dialects of the Akan language, which means that a synthesis of the common words and structures in the two dialects can be worked out into an entirely new language that speakers of both Akwapem and Asante can use with ease. There are also expressions in Kasem and Gonja (both belonging to the Gur family) which are similar to Akan and Ga (belonging to the Kwa language family). For instance, the word for ‘come’ is ba in Ga, Gonja and Kasem. Syntactically, it can be shown that most of the languages in Ghana portray, among other features, the SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) sentence structure, which is also found in English. In addition, in the Ghanaian languages the noun phrases are usually Noun + Determiner instead of the Determiner + Noun structure that is found in English. This Noun + Determiner structure of the noun phrase in Ghanaian languages can be illustrated in the following sentence: 141

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‘The man killed the dog.’ Nuu lâ Ga — man

Akan — Barima

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man

the no the

Richmond Kwesi

gbe killed kuu killed

gbee dog kraman dog

lâ the no the

Another reason for trusting in the feasibility of this synthesis method is the existence of borrowing across languages in the country. There are certain common words and phrases which can be found in most of the languages of Ghana due to borrowing. The Ga word shitô for ‘pepper sauce’ has been borrowed into almost every language in Ghana. The Hausa word for ‘internet fraud’ sakawa has also been borrowed into most of the languages in Ghana. The borrowed words and phrases in the various languages and dialects are good signs that the synthesis method can be used to construct a national language. Language borrowing shows that the synthesis method of elevating these borrowed words in the local languages into a national status would not only be possible, but such a language is likely to be more readily acceptable to a large number of the people in the society, since they have already been using so many of its words. Identification of the source of these borrowed words might be difficult but the presence of common words and expressions in the languages and dialects of Ghana is enough to show that assimilation is already an acceptable means of communicating comfortably aware of other languages beyond one’s native tongue. So the synthesis method of constructing a national language has merits as an extension of what already happens in the multi-lingual society. The synthesis method is also convincing due to the evidence of code-mixing in the conversations and speech of most Ghanaians. Most Ghanaians are multilingual and hence do a lot of code-mixing in conversations and even in public speeches. For instance, it is common to hear a speaker in an Akan-speaking communities in Accra saying Mâtô too loo meaning ‘I would buy goat meat’ where the first word is Akan and the last two words are Ga. Her choice of the Ga rendition for ‘goat meat’ may be due to the fact that the Ga version is more popular in the community than the Akan expression of the phrase. It is also probable that the speaker code-switched to show a form of belongingness and solidarity. It is obvious that the existence of code-switching in our daily 142

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conversations and activities re-enforces the notion that we can construct a national language based on the synthesis method. The socio-political situation in the country gives more credence to the acceptability of the synthesis method. In a country faced with a multiplicity of languages and allegiance to these languages, the best way to foster allegiance to the State is to have a common language to which all the people can willingly pledge allegiance. In other words, to show a sense of belongingness and unity, we need a language that is poised at unifying the people. This language would then gain symbolic value and a national element that might foster a national scope to cultural pride and with it growth and development in the society at large. It might inspire other acts of national fidelity, like paying taxes, voting, discouraging inter-regional rivalry and inspiring cross-regional economic cooperation.

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5. Which languages get accepted? There are several languages in Ghana; however, only nine of these languages have government-sponsored status. These nine languages are Akan (Fante, Twi, Akuapem), Nzema, Ga, Dangme, Ewe, Kasem, Gonja, Dagaare and Dagbani. In addition, Hausa, though not an indigenous Ghanaian language, is also widely spoken in Ghana. All these languages are spoken all over the country and they are the ones that need to be considered in constructing the national language. However, common expressions from other dialects and languages apart from those listed above could also be used in the national language. The choice of nine languages among over forty languages spoken in Ghana does not in any way suggest that the other languages are inferior. Neither is it meant to practice any form of discrimination. These nine languages are taught in basic schools and used in national media so it is assumed that almost every Ghanaian understands one of these languages. Nevertheless, as already mentioned, lexical items in the other languages which may meet the criteria of selection (see section 5.1) could be chosen and included in the national language portfolio. The incorporation of every single one of the forty or more languages as well as the numerous dialects of Ghana would not only be laborious and pedantic, but also impractical. 143

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The argument for the synthesis method is that there are several words, phrases, and sentences in the various languages that are widely known and spoken in different parts of the country. These words, phrases, and sentences, though specific to certain languages, have been dominant and are easily understood and used by non-speakers of those languages. These are the words that would be accepted into the national language portfolio.

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5.1. Criteria for acceptance One criterion for accepting the words and phrases into the national language is dominance or popularity of the words or phrases. The more popular or widely spoken words amongst the languages are the ones to be accepted. For instance, the word for ‘beans’ is edua in Asante, yôô in Ga, ayi in Ewe, bâna in Dagaare and tuya in Dagbani. However, the Ga word yôô is more popular than all the above words.2 The Ga expression for ‘beans and gari’ which is yôô kô gari is used even in Akan-speaking communities. The word for ‘pepper’ is shitô (Ga), mako (Akan), mako (Nzema), samaanii (Dagaare) and naanzua (Dagbani). It seems that the commonest expression for pepper is mako, however, the expression for pepper sauce used nationally in almost all languages is the Ga word shitô. The word for the adjective ‘red’ is etsuru (Ga), kôkôô (Akan), kôkôlâ (Nzema), dzân (Ewe), ziâ (Dagaare) and zhee in Dagbani. The Akan word kôkôô seems to be the commonest amongst the others. Using the above examples as an illustration, the national language would then have yôô for ‘beans’, shitô for ‘pepper sauce’ and kôkôô for ‘red’.

2

This assertion is debatable. It is has been argued by a colleague student of linguistics that yôô is only popular in Ga speaking areas such as Accra whilst edua is even more popular especially in the Ashanti region. But it is obvious that though Akan is spoken in a wider area than is Ga, it is rare to hear the Akan word for beans in Ga speaking areas whilst the Ga expression for beans is always used in Ga speaking areas along with its limited use in Akan and other language speaking areas. Viewed in this way, the Ga expression yôô is more extensive in its use, thus more popular than edua. In addition, the expression for ‘beans and gari’ (which is the Ga phrase yôô kâ gari) is the only expression used in both Akan and Ga speaking areas for ‘beans and gari’, indicating that yôô is used with more frequency than edua.

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Another criterion for acceptance into the bank of national language is the ease of access in terms of pronunciation. The words or phrases selected for universal use must be very easy to pronounce. This will allow everyone to be able to converse in the national language unselfconsciously, with ease. In addition, the words of this language should be easily inflected. The phonetics of the various contributing languages should be taken into consideration so that sounds in a particular language which are not found in the other languages are noted and proscribed, because it is probable that such sounds would create pronunciation difficulties for many speakers. The Esperanto language is phonetic: every word is pronounced exactly as it is spelled. There are no ‘silent’ letters or exceptions. This has made it very easy to speak. However it has also introduced an element of mechanical artificiality. Inasmuch as the national language is to be natural and familiar as well as easy for all Ghanaians to speak, the vocabulary should not be absolutely simplified just for the sake of easing pronunciation. Rather it should be, as much as possible, a reflection of the phonetics and pronunciation of the various indigenous languages in the nation. It is in the maintaining of these ‘silent’ and difficult to pronounce sounds in the national language that the synthesis method I am proposing differs from Zamenhof ’s Esperanto. The words to be considered should also not be ambiguous. Words with more than one meaning would create problems in the national language. For instance, the Ga word la means both ‘sing’ and ‘blood’. Thus its acceptance into the national language might create reference difficulties. The ambiguity of the word should be considered in its own language and in relation to other languages too. Some words in Ga could be the same in Ewe or any other language with a different meaning. These words should not be considered as they might create semantic difficulties in the national language. For example the word yi means ‘to beat’ in Ga and ‘to go’ in Ewe. In addition to the above, there are words which are already common to two or more Ghanaian languages as a result of borrowing. Some of these words have the same pronunciation and meaning in those two or more languages. Their acceptance into the national store of words would be beneficial. In the case of other synonyms, some words have the same 145

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meaning in two or more languages but slightly modified pronunciation. These words are usually identified with a large number of people in the society. The word for ‘come’ is ba in Ga, Kasem and Gonja. The Dagare word for paper which is krataa is possibly a borrowed word from Akan. Common expressions used in the political terrain which usually sustain wide media coverage could be used in developing national expressions. Expressions such as sakawa (fraud), azaa (deception) (as in ‘azaa budget’), kalabule (hoax or dupery) and kume preko (literally meaning ‘kill me instantly’) are very common expressions used in political discourse and highlighted in the media.

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6. Would the national language consist of only words? There are two different ways of constructing this form of national language. One of the ways is to construct a totally whole language out of the existing languages importing and merging the phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic structures of the various languages. The other way is to take one of the languages, probably the more dominant one which is also easy to speak and to write, as the base language or the matrix code to provide the phonological, morphological and syntactic structures, and then to import words and phrases from the other languages into it. The base language is not the national language; it only provides the structures that would allow the words from the other languages to fit into one coherent and time-tested whole. These two ways are equally viable to achieve the same result. However the first one is more tedious than the second. Zamenhof ’s first work on Esperanto, the ‘Unua Libro’ (First Book) published in 1887, contained 920 roots from which tens of thousands of words could be formed, together with the ‘Fundamenta Gramatiko’ (Grammatical Foundations), which consisted of sixteen basic grammatical rules. The majority of roots in Esperanto are based in Latin with a few from English and the other Slavic languages. Though these roots allowed easy formation of words in Esperanto, they also aided the formation of any words at all, provided they could be formed from the roots. To prevent the formation of ‘alien’ words and structures not found in the various indigenous languages, we could refrain from cataloguing a list of roots to be used in the national 146

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language or to ensure that if we outline a list of roots (common roots found in the various indigenous languages), we would guard against the formation of words and phrases not found in the various indigenous languages. This policing role is necessitated by the fact that the national language to be constructed should be at best a true reflection of the words and structures in the various indigenous languages. The national language to be created using this method would need a national body specifically mandated to work on the various languages to construct a national one out of the lot. It would need the work of specialists such as linguists and language planning officers to accurately construct the language.

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Conclusion A national language constructed by the synthesis method is not impracticable though it is laborious. It is a method of constructing a language by the people, from the people, and for the people. The synthesis method could be deemed as experimental, and an efficient way of achieving a national language in a multicultural and multilingual society such as Ghana. The national language created by this method would be the vehicle for a national identity as it would incorporate most of the elegant features of the many cultures and philosophies of the country’s various linguistic communities, incorporated into one shared, wholly inclusive vehicle of thought and expression. If a national language is constructed from the synthesis method, a time may come when someone in Ghana is asked, “What language do you speak?” and he or she will not reply: “I speak Akan,” or Ewe, or Ga, but simply “I speak Ghanaian.”

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References Geoghegan, R.H. 1889. Dr. Esperanto’s international language: introduction and complete grammar. Oxford: Balliol College Manheim, Ralph. 1998. Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf. Houghton Mifflin. Sebba, Mark. 1997. Contact languages: pidgins and creoles. London: Macmillan Press. Urban, Mark. 1999. Esperanto: frequently asked questions. http://www.esperanto. net/veb/faq.html. [Accessed December 3, 2009].

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Wikipedia Internet Encyclopaedia. 2009. Esperanto. http://www.en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Esperanto.html. [Accessed December 3, 2009].

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Material Culture and Ethnic Identity:

William N. Gblerkpor

Material Culture and Ethnic Identity: The Case of the Krobo, Ghana William N. Gblerkpor

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People’s knowledge about their heritage plays an important role in the construction and perpetuation of their local and national identity. The Krobo Mountain is the major political and ritual centre for all important rites and celebrations that have shaped Krobo identity, especially initiation rites and burials. Recent archaeological and ethnographic research into socio-cultural and political development in the Krobo area suggests retention of significant aspects of past Krobo traditions and identity. The survival of the Krobo Mountain site has been recognised as a major factor in the resilience and maintenance of Krobo traditions and identity. This paper shows how data from an ongoing archaeological research project in the Krobo area are being appropriated by the inhabitants for the propagation of Krobo identity. Finally, the role of historic landscapes in the construction and maintenance of local and national identities around the world is explored.

Introduction Throughout history, human societies have been confronted with the Permanence of manifestations of their own past, manifestations which made up the physical framework of their own present. These are the monuments and objects, but also landscapes and places, which make up the materials that make it possible for societies [nations] to construct [and maintain] their identity . . . (Alcock 2002: xiv, 222; Olivier 2004: 204-213). It is believed that between about A.D. fourteenth century and the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Krobo Mountain was the major political and ritual centre of the Krobo where all important rites and 149

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celebrations took place that shaped Krobo identity, especially initiation rites and burials (Arlt 2005: 31; Steegstra 2005: 29). According to Arlt (2005: 31), the Krobo Mountain was the cradle where the Krobo had emerged as a political entity. Furthermore, Krobo traditions claim that the mountaintop settlement, Klowem (home of the Krobo), was first settled by their ancestors after they migrated from Lôlôvor, following the dispersal of the Dangme into several groups (Wilson 1987: 474). However, in 1892, the Krobo were ejected from their mountaintop settlement by the British authorities for alleged acts of ritual murders (Huber 1993: 32). Some scholars who disagree with this allegation have instead cited economic, religious, and political reasons as being the main motivations for the expulsion (Arlt 2005: 2, 77-78; Omenyo 2001: 15; Steegstra 2005: 31). Steegstra (2005: 31) for example argues that the expulsion of the Krobo was partly due to the Basel Missionaries quest to convert the Krobo to Christianity, and their desire to have easy access to the population. She argues, “Moreover, [the missionaries] saw the mountain as ‘the Devils’ bulwark, as it was the seat of the priests”. Furthermore, Arlt (2005: 20) argues that “in order to force the population to pay the Poll Tax, the British launched a campaign against the Krobo.” These scholars thus believe that these reasons rather than the alleged ritual murders were the main motivations behind the British ejection of the Krobo from their mountain refuge. Their argument does not yield a denial of the allegation of ritual murders; rather they believe that the ritual murder issue was overemphasised. In fact, future research design for further archaeological investigations at the Krobo Mountain site will consider this issue. After abandoning the mountain settlement, the population moved to live permanently on their farm villages located in the plains, and at the foot of the Akuapem-Togo Mountain Range (figs.1-3). These locations had served as settlements where the youth, farmers and traders periodically stayed to conduct their farming and trading activities. Somanya, Manyakpogunor and Odumase are among the major successor towns that emerged from these farm settlements. Data from a series of recent ethnographic and archaeological researches coordinated by this author under the Krobo Mountain Archaeological Research Project (K-MAP), a collaborative archaeological research 150

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project between the University of Ghana and the Traditional Councils of Krobo, suggest retention of significant aspects of ancient Krobo traditions and cultural practices including indigenous religious rites and dipo (a puberty rite for young adult females). The study explores the role of the Krobo Mountain site in the maintenance of Krobo traditions and identity after more than hundred years after it was abandoned. Though the study may have been much more insightful if it had in addition to evaluating the role of the mountain in the maintenance of Krobo identity considered its role in the construction as well (this issue has been discussed in a forthcoming study: The Search for Krobo Identity – An Archaeological Survey of the Klowem, Ghana). The study also evaluates how data from the ongoing K-MAP have been appropriated by the local leaders for the formulation of some present-day socio-political and economic activities in the traditional area. Finally, the study provides an overview of how over the last century more, some groups of the world have deployed their knowledge of their material culture, archaeology and/or cultural heritage for the construction and maintenance of their identity.

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1. The role of material culture/archaeology in the construction and maintenance of identities The word identity comes from the Latin root idem, the same, and evokes a principle of endurance and continuity, usually in essentialist terms (Rowlands 2007: 61). Identity has variously been defined by scholars from diverse subject perspectives (e.g. Insoll 2007; Ross 1998: 275). But for the purposes of this study, Ross’ definition has been adopted. Ross (1998:14) defines identity as “a fixed set of customs, practices and meanings, and enduring heritage, a ready identifiable sociological category, a set of shared traits and/or experiences”. However, the idea that a group’s identity necessarily has to be characterised by a fixed set of customs is no longer tenable. According to Insoll (2007: 313) even within a relatively short space of time identity categorisations can shift drastically. National identity is partly sustained through the circulation of representations of spectacular and mundane cultural elements including landscapes, everyday places and objects, famous events and mundane

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rituals, gestures and habits, and examples of tradition and modernity which are held in common by large numbers of people (Edensor et al 2002: 139).

Over the centuries, material culture/archaeology has been recognised as a major factor in the construction and perpetuation of local and national identities. The concerns of this section include definition of archaeological remains, archaeology and material culture. The section also highlights how for centuries some populations have deployed and continue to deploy archaeological remains or material culture in the construction, propagation and maintenance of their identity. Material culture may be referred to as the physical objective world around us. It may include our staple foods and cuisine, architecture, landscape, bodily ornaments, art forms, and ceramic vessels. Archaeological remains on the other hand may be defined as the natural environment and the accompanying artificial material objects and features that had directly or indirectly affected a given human population within a specific geographical area. These may include landscapes, natural or cultural features, monuments and objects/artefacts. Archaeology could be described as the study of past human life-ways and culture using mainly material remains that have survived. Ethnographic, historical and historical linguistics are other useful sources of information for the archaeologist. As already mentioned, material culture and archaeology play a notable role in the creation and maintenance of identities for human populations. For instance, archaeology has been deployed consciously by both colonialist and nationalist politicians in the developed and developing world (e.g. Edensor 2002; Insoll 2007; Schmidt and Walz 2006: 66). The exploitation of the ruins of Great Zimbabwe by racist colonialists is a typical example (Walz 2007: 66). On the other hand, in their attempt to erase older associations or identities that do not conform to their agenda, religious fanatics have destroyed existing material culture, especially monuments that symbolise the rival groups’ identities. The Taliban’s destruction of the two statues of Buddha in Afghanistan in 2001 is a typical example. Despite the potential role of archaeology in the construction and maintenance of local and national identities, the discipline is susceptible to other abuses. According to 152

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Insoll (2007: 7) “the archaeology of identities, perhaps more than any other area of archaeological endeavour, is potentially loaded with pitfalls and opportunities for the hijack of what seemed like innocent research for polemical purposes.” Thus, Insoll cautions archaeologists who may be thinking of deploying archaeological data for the purpose of creating a national identity. Insoll argues that since states are usually made up of numerous ethnic collectives, minority identities may be excluded in such ventures.1 The question remains as to why material culture or archaeology has become the target of these ‘builders’ and ‘destroyers ’of identity. According to Meskell (2007: 24) “it is the very materiality of our field [archaeology]—the historical depth of monuments and objects, their visibility in museums, their iconic value—that ultimately has residual potency in the contemporary imaginary. These objects [material remains] can be mobilised and deployed in identity struggles . . .” Archaeological research has the potential to present to us remains of the past in the form of artefacts, monuments, landscapes, which represent past human behaviour and practices that provide people with collective memory and thereby strengthens societies’ sense of identity. As expressed by Olivier (2004: 2), the fabric of our present-day world is made up of materials from the past. It has also been noted that formal qualities which affected people include the manually built environment and landscape. Thus the people’s relationship with the past is a key element in forming collective identities, because people grow up relating to things—some more familiar than others—in a changing but identifiable object world (Edensor 2002: 103). Edensor (2002: 171) also holds the view that nations construct and exhibit their material culture with the idea of asserting their national identity. He cited the Millennium Dome in Britain as a monument designed to symbolise a national flagship of the millennium celebrations in 2000. He also observed that the dome was designed to mark the year 2000, and simultaneously to provide a celebratory assessment of the contemporary character of the British nation. In a presentation titled Acquiring and Possessing Korean Things: Material Culture and National Identity in Japan, Morgan Pitelka (2008) 1

Personal communication, 2009.

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demonstrates how the survival of old things (especially objects from the sixteenth century) informs modern national identity in Japan. He highlighted the role that old things played in the making of modern identity in Northeast Asia. Pitelka also argued how Buddhist monks, merchant tea practitioners, and feudal lords actively sought ceramics and other forms of material culture from Korea. They cherished and labelled these pieces as products of Korai (Koryo). This author under took recently a tour of a number of Chinese and Italian restaurants in the United States and Britain reveals material culture and images or objects of Chinese and Italian identity/origin respectively (including architecture, art forms, considered native to their home countries or region).

2. The Krobo and the Krobo Mountain (site)

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Indeed we know, through the historians of those ancient times, that the Romans of the high empire would religiously preserve, in the midst of the ‘modern’ brick and marble buildings of the Roman capital, a wattle and daub hut which supposedly dated back to the legendary days of the foundation of Rome. As Susan Alcock emphasized in her book, Greeks in the Roman Empire were deeply nostalgic for classic Hellenistic Greece, while archaeology has shown that classical Greece particularly revered places thought to belong to the time of the Homeric wars (Olivier 2004: 205; Bradley 2002: xii, 171 ).

“There is a Krobo saying powa be ayo yokube se pi eno bimi he: meaning it is because of name [identity] or fame that we fight for the mountain [Krobo Mountain], not because it is fertile for farming” (Wilson 2003: 22). Kloyo (Krobo Mountain, not Krobo woman which is its other meaning) and Klowem are the other names of the Krobo Mountain. Known by three separate names, the Krobo Mountain is certainly a significant landmark on the Krobo landscape. The Krobo Mountain (0º 05’E - 6º 05’N) is located about 70km north-east of Accra, along the Tema-Akosombo highway. It is located about 2km south-east of Okwenya, and about 4km east of Somanya in the Eastern Region of Ghana (Figs. 1-2). The mountain is separated by a valley into two peaks namely the south-western (Yilo Krobo) and north154

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eastern (Manya Krobo) sections. It is a rocky steep-sided terrain with pockets of gentle slope to flat portions. The vegetation is grassy, interspersed with mainly big cotton and baobab trees. There is a pocket of forest that appears to be a reserve located near the peak of the mountain. The site also has many caves, rock shelters, boulders, sacred groves and water cisterns. Stone terraces and walls, shrines, ruins of houses, palm oil processing cisterns are among features that characterize the site. The entire site measures about 2 x 2.5km and stands at a height of 350m above sea level. Currently, the site faces threat from Fulani herdsmen who graze their animals on top of the mountain, thereby destroying fragile artefacts such as pots and glass bottles whilst the annual burning of the vegetation cover by these herdsmen constitutes an even greater threat to the archaeological evidence for the fire destroys some of the archaeological record and the bare terrain exposes artefacts to treasure hunters. The erosion of the top soil by runoff water from the torrential rains that follow the bush burning dislodges the buried archaeological remains, thereby disturbing their original context (Gblerkpor 2005, 2006). The construction of a terrace garden at a portion of the north-eastern section of the mountain to attract visitors to the site has also resulted in the destruction of some of the archaeological record. To prevent further destruction of the site, the two traditional councils in collaboration with the Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana, Legon, and the Krobo Hills Resort Ltd. is addressing the situation through education and by providing security on the site.

3. Survey of current ethno-archaeological research activities in the Krobo area Even though the archaeological importance of the Krobo Mountain site was recognized in the 1950s (see Huber 1993: 32; Arlt 2005: 10) the site did not benefit from the initial archaeological surveys that were conducted in the East Accra Plains (e.g. Ozanne 1962, 1965a, 1965b, 1965c). This study did not identify any concrete reason/s for the exclusion of the Krobo Mountain during Ozanne’s archaeological research activities in the East Accra Plains especially, his 1960s surveys at the Shai Hills, which is just a couple of kilometres south of the Krobo Mountain. 155

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Perhaps, the notoriety of the Krobo as head-hunters and wicked people, and the perception of the Krobo Mountain as the seat of Krobo atrocity by both the colonial government and some non-Krobo (Arlt 2005: 83) may have made the site un-attractive to the pioneer archaeologists. However, it is interesting to note that the Shai Hills area was not exempted from the ‘head-hunters’ caption. Therefore one cannot conclude that Ozanne’s fear of the ‘head-hunting’ Krobo kept him away from their ancestral settlement. Other reasons may have done so. Perhaps, as we continue to dig into the archaeology of the Krobo area, as well as the East Accra Plains in general, a better picture of the criteria for selecting sites for survey might become clearer. Since 2004, research teams of students and staff of the Archaeology Department, University of Ghana, Legon have been undertaking archaeological surveys and excavations on the mountain and its surrounding plains with the view of providing archaeological insight into settlement and cultural developments in the Krobo area (see Boachie-Ansah 2007; Gblerkpor 2005, 2006, 2008; Nimako 2005). In 2007, the Department of Archaeology (now Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies), University of Ghana, Legon and the Yilo Krobo Traditional Council launched the Krobo Mountain Archaeological Research Project to coordinate ongoing archaeological research activities in the Krobo area. In the same year the Manya Krobo Traditional Council was also contacted on the same subject.

4. Historical and ethnographic research The current study has adopted a comparative approach that integrates archaeology, history, ethnography, ecology and linguistic of the site. The study combined archaeological survey and excavation, ethnographic research, survey of written and oral historical records, and anthropological works on the Krobo area both published and unpublished. The study also involved a cross section of the descendant population in the archaeological field survey, identification and interpretation of the archaeological data. Oral tradition was collected in addition to the study of written historical records. The archaeological research involved surface survey and excavations. Ethnographic and historic data have 156

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provided guidelines for the archaeological survey and excavation. The non-archaeological information was also useful in the identification, interpretation, and explanation of the archaeological data. For instance, the ethnographic analogues provided interpretative framework for the evaluation of the indigenous religious structures and objects, architecture, medicinal plants, food processing, land use, water management and burial practices on the mountain. The Krobo are knowledgeable about their political and culture history, especially aspects of developments from the nineteenth century. Despite deliberate attempts by the Basel mission and colonial authorities to ‘civilize’ the Krobo by the expulsion of the inhabitants from their ancestral town, the destruction of their shrines and deities, as well as banning of some customs there are significant ethnographic and archaeological evidence that suggest the retention of some aspects of past traditions and cultural practices (Arlt 2005: 41). This consciousness may also have resulted from the retention of some socio-religious institutions and practices such as the Dipo and Klama (a traditional Dangme musicdance form) by the descendants. These two performances preserve and perpetuate the traditions, culture and history of the Krobo (Coplan 1972). The survival of the Krobo Mountain site (the mountain and the associated archaeological remains) may have more than any other singular element contributed to the preservation of Krobo traditions and identity, despite all attempts by the colonial authorities and the Basel Missionaries to eradicate them. Because the Krobo are well informed about their cultural heritage, and the events of the 1892 sack of their ancestors, the Yilo Krobo for example, in 1992 introduced the Kloyo-sikplemi festival, a cultural festival that sought to commemorate the centenary of the ejection of their ancestors and to showcase Krobo traditions and cultural heritage, mobilise the local populace for community based development, to attract tourists and to direct investors as well as government’s attention (Arlt 2005: 38). It is now an annual event and during the celebrations, ancient costumes, food and musical performances are displayed. Indigenous religious rites such as pouring of libations and animal sacrifices are performed at major locations [e.g. palace of the paramount chief of Yilo Krobo (figs. 4-5)]. Traditional performance of this nature and their 157

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accompanying narrations proved useful for the study. Using interviews, oral traditions were collected from priests, priestesses, royals, teachers, elderly men and women, and others conversant with the oral traditions of the area. A number of visits to some of the contemporary Krobo settlements such as Sra, Somanya and Odumase enabled the collection of information about socio-economic and other cultural practices of the people. Particular attention was paid to local shrines, their structures, associated cultural materials and their functions. The traditional architecture was also examined. The building materials, structural designs and functions of historic buildings the lowland settlements were studied. Additional information on contemporary cultural practices was collected during socio-cultural events such as the Kloyo-sikplemi festival and dipo rites of 2003 to 2008. The functions of some contemporary artefacts identical to artefacts and features recorded on the mountain were observed at first-hand during traditional performances at the annual Kloyo- Sikplemi festival and dipo rites. For instance, the use of local oil lamps, iron anklets, specialised ceramic vessels, beads, and cowries were observed (figs. 5-7). Other relevant observations made included the use of shrines, and medicinal plants that have also been identified (usually associated with shrines) on the mountain. Indigenous religious rites including ritual bathing, wearing of costumes, food preparation, the sacrificial slaughter of animals (e.g. goats) and their application, which rarely survive in the archaeological record were also observed and recorded. Historical documentary sources also proved very useful in this study. The works reviewed included Arlt (2005); Huber (1993); Omenyo (2001); Steegstra (2005); and Wilson (1991, 1995). Each of these works attempts the evaluation of some aspects of Krobo socio-economic, religious and political developments through time and space. For instance, issues about the origins of the chieftaincy institutions, dipo rites, commercial farming, the huza system of land acquisition, historic landscapes of the Krobo Mountain; land disputes, destruction of shrines by the colonial army, architectural designs, population, external influences on the people, and change and continuity in traditions and culture are highlighted in these sources. Although there has not been any radiocarbon 158

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age determination of the earliest occupation of the Krobo Mountain site, some recent publications (e.g. Wilson 1991, 1995) have suggested a fourteenth century date. Based on linguistic evidence and historical sources, Wilson (1992: 14, 33) estimates that the first settlers on the mountain arrived there “from around the fourteenth century and the name ‘Crobbo’ [Krobo] made its first cartographical appearance on a map of the region by 1701.” So far, relative dates inferred from dateable imported objects from the 2004 test excavations, including ceramics and glass suggest a rather recent date—late eighteenth century. However, it is worth noting that the test dig did not cover a sufficient area to merit any form of generalisation. Nonetheless, researchers are optimistic that ongoing excavations at selected portions of the site are likely to generate data that will facilitate a radiometric age determination of the Krobo Mountain site.

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5. Surface survey The surface survey provided an insight into the nature, distribution, function and chronology of some of the cultural and natural features identified on the mountain. For example, results from the survey were useful in the determination of the relative age of imported ceramics, glass bottles, and hence associated socio-cultural developments. Artefact assemblages, individual artefacts, surface features as well as the landscape were observed, analyzed, and recorded. The distribution pattern of the local pottery, glass bottles, and architectural remains was recorded. The ancient architectural landscape (including stone walls, stone terraces and foundation, and house mounds), caves, rock shelters, water cisterns, shrines, burials and other features have been studied. The surface survey was extensive, covering the accessible portions of both the north-eastern and south-western sections of the mountain. The main survey was done on foot, and involved observation, collection, recording and mapping of selected archaeological features. This survey strategy facilitated the identification and on-site analysis and interpretation of a substantial amount of archaeological and environmental data. The survey also involved aerial observation and photography. In 2006 and 2007 the author and his associates conducted a series of flights over 159

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the mountain and its surrounding plains and took many photographs and a video coverage. The aerial survey afforded the team a rare opportunity to study the landscape from the air. The topography of the site, old footpaths, river valleys, and settlement patterns were recorded. The artefact assemblage retrieved through the surface collection involved selective sampling of artefacts and eco-facts considered relevant to the study. Dateable imported objects such as schnapps bottles, drinking glasses and imported ceramics, as well as diagnostic local pottery, metal objects were preferred. This artefact assemblage bears makers’ marks or seals that indicate source and period of production. The relative chronology for the site was thus obtained through the evaluation of these artefacts. Human and animal bones were also recovered and the discovery of exposed human bones from a number of locations provided data on burial practices in nineteenth century Krobo. The ground survey also provided some insight into household units, settlement pattern, and local resource utilisation. Although the archaeological survey was extended to the northeastern section of the mountain during the 2007 research, only limited surface collection was undertaken. This was due to logistical and time constraints. For this reason, whereas the historical references in this article relate to both the Yilo Krobo and Manya Krobo, the bulk of the archaeological evidence pertains to the Yilo Krobo (south-western) section. However, it is worth noting that both the Yilo and Manya sides bear similar physical environment, archaeological records recognizable in the physical and cultural landscapes. For instance, the stone terraces and foundations, pottery, schnapps bottles, beads, cowries and oyster shells recovered and/or recorded from the surface are similar.

6. The excavations The excavations undertaken to date provided material evidence about some aspects of past burial practices and indigenous rituals on the mountain. It also supplied data for the development of a relative chronological framework for the settlement. This was achieved through a comparative analysis of finds from the surface survey and excavations. The comparison was undertaken to ensure proper ordering of the surface finds that 160

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were mixed up by erosion and human activities on the mountain. Five units comprising two pits (P1 = 1 x 1.5m and P2 = 2 x 2m), and three trenches (Trench 1 = 2.5 x 4m; Trench 2 = 1 x 9m and Trench 3 = 2 x 3m) were excavated (fig.2). The first excavation (P1, T1 and T2) was done in 2004, and it was aimed at providing information on the techniques used in building the terraces. For this reason all three units were opened close to terrace walls. The idea behind this was to reveal the hidden parts of the terraces, and thus expose the original terrain for assessment. Two units were excavated in January 2007 (P2 and T3). Pit 2, P2 was opened at a spot with circular stone formation believed to be remains of a shrine. The excavation was thus aimed at determining whether the structure was a shrine or not, because local tradition and historical accounts claim that all Krobo shrine (especially huts) are circular in design. T3 on the other hand, was excavated in one of the rooms of the Konô’s palace. This unit was aimed at providing data for working out a relative chronology and to have an idea about artefacts to expect from the palace. Additionally, each unit excavated during both seasons also sought to provide insight into the chronology of the settlement through recovery of dateable finds from stratified context. The 2004 excavations were restricted to the Okpâ suburb. The suburb was selected for excavation because it had the highest concentration of terrace foundation platforms and artefacts and the main ritual ground of the entire settlement, locally known as Okpâ-Tâsa was located there (Huber 1993: 34). It was also believed that the abundance of house foundations in the area as well as the associated dateable artefact assemblage reflected what was below the surface. As expected, large amounts of diagnostic finds were recovered from the excavations. The 2007 units were opened at the palace located at the Nyâwâ suburb, south of the Okpâ suburb. The area was selected for excavation because it was the seat of government for the settlement. (Information from the 2008 excavation has not been included in this report. Analysis of the excavated finds is underway at the University of Ghana, Legon).

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7. Features and finds: why Krobo Mountain? A total of over 13,680 archaeological remains was recorded and/or recovered during the survey and excavations on the Krobo Mountain. The site yielded cowries, oyster shells, hollowed and grinding stones, pottery, iron implements, glass bottles, glass beads, animal and human bones. Seven hundred and seven features including stone terraces and foundations, natural rock shelters and caves, circular pits for extracting palm oil, and mounds representing collapsed buildings were also recorded. The Krobo Mountain site and Klowem (home of the Krobo) has become the single most influential factor in perpetuating and directing Krobo traditions and identity in the twenty-first century. Presently, the site features prominently in Krobo oral traditions and histories. The question one may ask is why has the Krobo Mountain assumed such a foremost role in shaping Krobo traditions and identity, after more than a century of its abandonment? A number of probable reasons have been advanced: first, the mountain is the most imposing landmark on the natural landscape of the Krobo area. Secondly, the site provided refuge for the ancestors of the present-day Krobo. Furthermore, the Krobo Mountain was the site where all legendary Krobo indigenous religious and political leaders including priests, priestesses and past paramount chiefs were buried. And as indicated earlier, the mountain was the major ancient settlement site is characterized by abundant and well preserved archaeological remains. These factors have contributed in making the Krobo Mountain site such a prominent feature in Krobo history, traditions and identity. The Kloyo now serves as the foundation on which the collective identity of the Krobo rests. Rowlands (2007: 60) maintains that “for cultural heritage to be significant it must therefore be unifying and transcendent and be constitutive of a sense of personal and group identity.” The Krobo Mountain seems to have done exactly that: provision of a common heritage. Having also served as the refuge for the Krobo, during hostile periods (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) in southern Ghana, and as a burial place for their legendary religious and political leaders, coupled with the copious archaeological features, the Krobo Mountain 162

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now symbolizes the greater past cultural achievements of the Krobo. It is therefore not surprising that there is a Krobo saying powa be ayo yokube se pi eno bimi he: meaning “it is because of name [identity] or fame that we fight for the mountain [Krobo Mountain], not because it is fertile for farming” (Wilson 2003: 22). During the last two decades the two Krobo traditional councils: Yilo Krobo and Manya Krobo Traditional Councils have deployed the Krobo Mountain site in the creation of some new social-cultural and political events in the Krobo area (e.g. the Kloyo- Sikplemi). In addition to the new events, old ones have also been modified so as to rally the people around the ancestral settlement and its associated traditions and histories. It has also been observed that descendants have been appropriating materials from the mountain site including stone blocks that have fallen off from boulders on top of the mountain (fig. 8). Additionally, programmes (brochures) for annual festivals are full of colour-pictures of archaeological remains instead of photographs of chiefs and queens, which was the order of the day.

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8. Indications of retention of aspects of past Krobo socio-religious practices There are considerable archaeological data on cultural, political, social and indigenous African religious practices on the Krobo Mountain. The study produced a number of architectural remains, natural features and an artefact assemblage known to be associated with local religious performance and political activities. These include five circular house foundations representing ‘room-kept shrines’, and five ‘outdoor shrines’ as well as iron bells, terracotta figurines, and palaces. Traditionally, shrines found in Krobo and other Dangme areas are rarely housed or built in permanent building materials. But when they are, the structures are circular in shape, representing architectural design believed to be traditional Dangme building style (see Huber 1993: 36). The presence of circular dipo shrines in present-day Krobo and Shai areas provide examples that corroborate the archaeological record and the written and oral historical accounts (see Huber 1993 for alternative description of shrines and other ritual sites in Krobo). 163

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The most obvious religious structures identifiable on the mountain are the huge rocks associated with artefact assemblages and plants associated with indigenous rites of passage and worship. These rocks appear in three major categories: 1) ‘large’ flat-surface rocks (40-50m in width and 50-60m in length), 2) rock shelters, and 3) rock boulders. The Okpâ-tâsa (rock of Okpâ) (40 x 60m), located within the Okpâ suburb typifies the ‘large’ category. The Okpâ-tâsa (shrine) was littered with several schnapps bottles, beads, potsherds and cowries. It was also encircled by cactus and jatropha plants. These and other local plants like the buna tree and nyabatso provided herbs for ritual cleansing and curative purposes. These plants are found at present-day shrines in Krobo, including the palace shrine of the Yilo Krobo paramount chief. These plants also serve nonreligious functions such as in their use for the construction of fences for gardens. Perhaps the plants ability to withstand drought and fire make them suitable for use in religious practices. The use of the Okpâ-tâsa for the performance of the mandatory dipo ceremonies may have accounted for the prominence of the Okpâ-tâsa shrine in Krobo traditions. According to the oral traditions, it was specifically here that the dipo ceremonies were performed. As noted by Steegstra (2005: 129), shrines played important roles in ancient Krobo, and as many as 133 ‘fetish haunts’ (shrines) were reportedly destroyed by the Hausa soldiers who enforced the ejection order of the British authorities. Artefacts retrieved from the excavations and associated with indigenous religious activities include a terracotta figurine. These items are believed to have served various purposes in the shrines. For instance, the Ka-si-tsotsââ (vessel with stand) was used for serving porridge-like corn or millet flour solution, mamu-nyu to the gods. Glass beads of all shapes and colours as well as cowries have been collected from shrine contexts. The ethnographic information suggests that these beads and cowries were worn by traditional priests and priestesses in Krobo. White-coloured beads, which signify purity in Krobo tradition, are the most preferred ones by indigenous priests and priestesses. More than 2,150 nineteenth century schnapps glass bottles representing about 90.0% and 28.0% of glass objects and total finds respectively were recovered. In addition to the liquor bottles, local pottery vessels, mumui and likôkô (little clay 164

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cup) for tapping palm-wine and pouring of libations have respectively been retrieved. This suggests a high use of liquor by the inhabitants. Although social drinking may have contributed to the liquor collections, the constant association of these artefacts with shrines suggests their use in rituals, burial and religious practices. Alcohol libation constitutes an important aspect of Krobo indigenous religion. This is consistent with local traditions and ethnographic practices among the Krobo, whose religious, social and political activities are accompanied by lavish use of schnapps. The ancient Krobo were polytheistic. They had gods that were responsible for various natural and human events. For instance, there were Ohue dumla (rain god), Medoku Aye (god for blacksmithing), Nadu and Kotoklo (war gods) and Likpotsu (god responsible for peace, riches, and prevention of infectious diseases). As an integrating element of the Krobo society, the Dipo rites and the worship of the war gods Nadu and Kotoklo were of great importance. The indigenous priests and priestesses play important roles in Krobo traditions and culture. They conducted the customs and rituals associated with the worship of the gods. They still play various key roles in contemporary customary rites and festivals in the area. For example, the Yilo Krobo priestess, Mama Adzovi, seems to have a lot of influence on the community because her safe ascent and descent of the mountain is a pre-requisite for the formal commencement of the Kloyo-sikplemi (fig. 9). The author witnessed this during the 2006 festival when the durbar of chiefs took place after her descent of the mountain. The archaeology has not produced any significant evidence to show external influence on Krobo indigenous religion. Apart from three rusted iron gong-like bells and some glass beads whose origin may be attributed to the neighbouring Ewe group, very little archaeological evidence was retrieved. Perhaps subsequent study may bring more data to enhance our knowledge about external influences on the local religion. Nonetheless the historical accounts and ethno-linguistic evidence do acknowledge considerable Ewe elements in Krobo religion. For instance, the name Mama Adzovi for the Yilo State priestess is Ewe. The priestess spoke the Ewe language with at least one of her associate priestesses during the 2006 Kloyo-sikplemi festival (Kodzo Gavua, Personal communication 2006). This can be explained by the fact that the Ewe were among the 165

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non-Dangme groups which joined the Krobo on the mountain in the past (Huber 1993: 48).

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Conclusion The presence of state structures including shrines, palaces, as well as the well planned nature of the settlement pattern suggest that the Krobo Mountain ancient settlement had attained a high level of political, socio-cultural and landscape developments before the Krobo expulsion in 1892. The high numbers of domestic and ritual artefacts and the near absence of agricultural implements at the site, confirms historical records that the site was principally used for habitation and domestic activities rather than for agricultural purposes. There is strong linguistic evidence that supports this view. Traditionally, the people call the site Klowem, home of the Krobo confirming claims that the site was the major centre where the group had emerged as a political and ethnic entity - identity. The study has demonstrated that material culture and/or archaeology has been appropriated by many groups around the world for the construction and/or maintenance of their identity. The research has also shown that the Krobos’ (descendants’) knowledge about their heritage especially the Krobo Mountain site, traditions and history continue to play key role in the maintenance of Krobo traditions and cultural practices—identity. Indeed, the Kloyo represents the most magnificent cultural heritage/feature that unifies the Krobo and provides them with a sense of personal and group identity. The appropriation of material objects from the mountain site for contemporary socio-religious rites as well as close similarity between artefacts recovered from shrine context on the mountain, and ethnographic ritual objects from the present successor communities suggest retention of aspects of past Krobo customs and religious practices. The study has shown that the survival of the Krobo Mountain site continues to shape Krobo identity. Hence the destruction/death (either through stone quarrying or activities of Fulani headsmen) may eventually lead to grave alterations of Krobo traditions and identity. Since similar neighbouring hills have already fallen victim to commercial stone quarries without any serious legal protective regime 166

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for our heritage, accelerated archaeological research and documentation of the Krobo Mountain settlement appears to be the most viable strategy to adopt among the available options.

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Acknowledgements I wish to thank the co-coordinators of the Ghana–Denmark Archaeological Project (G– DARCH Project), Dr. Yaw Bredwa-Mensah, Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana, and Prof. Klav Randsborg, Department of Archaeology, University of Copenhagen respectively for providing financial support for the 2004 and 2008 fieldwork. Mr. Bossman M. Murey, the Chief Technician, Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana, Legon, also deserves a thank you for his support throughout the field and laboratory works. Furthermore, I thank Mr. Cosmos Logosu, Driver-mechanic, Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana, Legon, for his great support during the fieldwork. Sincere thanks go to the all the students of the Department of Archaeology and other Departments of the University of Ghana, who participated in the 2004 to 2009 field seasons. I am also grateful to the chiefs and people of the Krobo Traditional areas for willingly accepting my request to carry out this study at their sacred ancestral site without placing any restriction in my way. I acknowledge the late paramount chief of Yilo Krobo, Nene Narh Dorwutey Ologo VI, Paramount Queen, Naana Korleykuor Adjado III, Padi Ologo, Waku-Matse and the Development Chief, Nene Tumey Odonkor for their immense assistance. My local field assistants, Tanko and the late Emmanuel, who carried out most of the dig, deserve a big thank you. Mr. Leonard B. Crossland, and Kodzo Gavua (PhD), Co-director, K-MAP, and Head, Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana, provided the needed institutional support and direction during the entire fieldwork.

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References Alcock, Susan E. 2002. Archaeologies of the Greek past: Landscape, monuments, and memories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. xiv, 222. Anquandah, James. 1985. Ethnoarchaeological Clues to Ghana’s Great Past and Greater Future? University of Ghana Monographs and Papers in African Archaeology 2. Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana, Legon. Anquandah, James. 1992. Preliminary Report (1990) on Archaeological Investigation at Adwuku Hill, Shai, Ghana. Archaeology of Ghana: 33 -37. Anquandah, James 2006. The Accra Plains c.AD 1400–1800. An overview of trade, politics and culture from the perspective of historical archaeology. Accra before colonial times: proceedings of a colloquium on early Accra. Kropp Dakubu (ed.) Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. Arlt, V. 1995. Diplomacy and power politics in mid-nineteenth century Krobo-Krobo chieftaincy seen through the reports by Basel missionaries. Unpublished MA thesis. Department of History, University of Basel, Basel. Arlt, V. 2005. Christianity, imperialism and culture. The expansion of the two Krobo States in Ghana, c.1830 to 1930. Unpublished PhD thesis. Department of History, University of Basel, Basel. Boachie-Ansah, James 2007. Traditions and change in the pottery from Mount Mary Training College and Adjikpo-Yokunya, Eastern Region, Ghana. In EAZ, ethnogr.-Archäol. Z. 48, S.: 83-107. Bradley, Richard. 2002. The past in prehistoric societies. London: Routledge. Bredwa-Mensah, Yaw. 2002. Historical–archaeological investigations at the Fredriksgave Plantation, Ghana: A case study of slavery and plantation life on a nineteenth century Danish plantation on the Gold Coast. Unpublished PhD thesis. Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana, Legon.

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Coplan, D.B. 1972. Krobo Kalama. Unpublished MA thesis. Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. Debrah, J. N. 1982. Archaeological survey of the Krobo Mountain ancient settlement. Nyame Akuma. 21: 17. Dickson, Kwabena B. 1971. A historical geography of Ghana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edensor, Tim et al. 2002. National identity and popular culture and everyday life. Berg: Oxford. Garrard, Timothy F. 1980. Brass in Akan Society to the nineteenth century: a survey of the archaeological, ethnographic and historical evidence. Unpublished MA thesis. University of Ghana, Legon. Gblerkpor, William N. 2005. An archaeological investigation of the Krobo Mountain Dry-stone Terraces. Unpublished MPhil thesis. Department of Archaeology. University of Ghana, Legon.

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Gblerkpor, William N. 2006. An archaeological investigation of the Krobo Mountain Settlement site. Nyame Akuma. 65: 18-23. Gblerkpor, William N. 2008. Current archaeological research at the Krobo Mountain site, Ghana. Timothy Insoll (ed.) Current archaeological research in Ghana. Cambridge monographs in African archaeology 74: 71-84. Gblerkpor, William N. (forthcoming). The Search for Krobo Identity: Archaeological Survey of the Klowem, Ghana. Presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. April 22–26, 2009. Atlanta, Georgia. Huber, Hugo. 1993. The Krobo: traditional, social and religious life of a West African people. Studia Instituti Anthropos 16. Fribourg, Germany: Fribourg University Press. Insoll, Timothy (Ed.) 2007. The Archaeology of Identities: A Reader. London: Routledge. Insoll, Timothy (Ed.) 2008. Current archaeological research in Ghana. Cambridge monographs in African archaeology. Johnson, M. 1970. The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa. Parts 1 and 2. Journal of African History 11: 17-49, 133-335. Kropp-Dakubu, M.E. 1982. The peopling of Southern Ghana: a linguistic viewpoint. In The archaeological and linguistic reconstruction of African history. C. Ehret, and M. Posnansky (Eds.) Berkeley: University of California Press, pp 245-225. Meskell, Lynn. 2007. Archaeologies of identities. In Archaeology of identities—a reader. Timothy Insoll (Ed.) London: Routledge, pp. 23-43. Nimako, Evans. 2005. An archaeological investigation at Mount Mary College and Adjikpoyokonya. Unpublished MPhil thesis. Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana, Legon.

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Olivier, Laurent. 2004. The past of the present: Archaeological memory and time. Archaeological Dialogues 10 (2): 204–213. Omenyo, Cephas N. 2001. The ongoing encounter between Christians and African culture: case study of girls’ nubility rites of the Krobos. Accra: Jupiter Printing Press Ltd. Ozanne, Paul. 1962. Notes on early historic archaeology of Accra. Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana. 6: 51-70. Ozanne, Paul. 1965a. Notes on the Later Prehistory of Accra. Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3: 2-22. Ozanne, Paul. 1965b. Adwuku: Fortified Hill-top Village in Shai. Ghana Notes and Queries. 7: 4-5. Ozanne, Paul. 1965c. Ladoku: An Early Town Near Prampram. Ghana Notes and Queries. 7: 6-7.

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Pitelka, Morgan. 2008. Acquiring and possessing Korean things: material culture and national identity in Japan. Presented at UCLA, Los Angeles. March 4. . Ross, Doran. 1998. Fashioned Heritage. Wrapped in Pride—Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Rowlands, Michael. 2007. The politics of identity in archaeology. In Archaeology of Identities—A Reader. Timothy Insoll (Ed.) London: Routledge, pp. 59–72. Schmidt, Peter and Jonathan Walz. 2006. Critical historical archaeologists and historical representations. Historical archaeology in Africa: representations, social memory, and oral traditions. Lanham: AltaMira Press, pp 45-70. Steegstra, M. 2005. Dipo and the politics of culture in Ghana. Accra: Woeli Publishing Services. Van Dyke, Ruth M. and Susan E. Alcock (Eds.) 2003. Archaeologies of memory. Oxford: Routledge. Wilson, Alexandra (Ed.) 2003. The Bead is Constant. Accra: Ghana Universities Press Wilson, Louis E. 1987. The Rise of Paramount Chiefs among the Krobo (Ghana). International Journal of African Historical Studies. 20: 471-495. Wilson, Louis E. 1991. The Krobo People of Ghana to 1892. A Political and Social History. Monograph in International Studies. Africa Series, No. 58. Athens: Ohio University.

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Wilson, Louis E. 1990. The ‘Bloodless Conquest’ in Southern Ghana: The Hunza and territorial expansion of the Krobo in the nineteenth century. The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 23(2): 265-297.

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Figures

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Fig. 1: A Map of the study area showing sites mentioned in the paper (After Wilson 1990: 269)

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Fig. 2: A Contour Map of the Krobo Mountain – showing excavated Trenches and Pits, and Stone Terraces and Foundations

Fig. 3: The Krobo Mountain

Fig. 4: Ruins of the old Palace of the Kono (SW side)

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Fig. 5: A group of elders eating ceremonial meal at the Palace site

Fig. 6: Stones from the Krobo Mountain

Fig. 7: A Dipo girl sitting on a stone block the removed from the Krobo Mountain

Fig. 8: A stone block being carried from Krobo Mountain

Fig. 9: The State Priestess of Yilo Krobo descending the Krobo Mountain

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Kwasi Wiredu and his critics

Helen Lauer

Negotiating Pre-colonial History and Future Democracy: Kwasi Wiredu and his critics 1

Helen Lauer Two vocal critics of Kwasi Wiredu’s political thought interpret his arguments for non-party politics as a continuation of early African nationalists’ justifications for one-party rule. These critics also regard Wiredu’s accounts of traditional Akan consensual governance as illusory and romanticised. Yet when these criticisms are assessed in light of several passages found in Wiredu’s published works over the last fifteen years, one discovers a pervasive disparity between the claims mistakenly attributed to Wiredu, and the things he actually has said about precolonial Akan society, and about non-party, multi-party, and one-party politics. It is argued that such misinterpretations result in discouraging academic debate that could otherwise contribute to the future monitoring and shaping of Ghana’s governing practices and institutions.

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Introduction During his first visit to the Ghanaian Parliament, the forty-fourth United States President, Barack Obama, emphasised that “each nation gives life to democracy in its own way, according to its own tradition...” He acknowledged “consensus,” as one among different forms of democracy existing around the world.2 One contemporary Ghanaian interpretation 1

This is a substantially revised version of the paper presented at the 7th Faculty of Arts Colloquium, University of Ghana, Legon 16-17th 2009, in light of Professor Kwasi Wiredu’s much appreciated comments in subsequent discussions.

2

Spoken July 11, 2009 Accra: International Conference Centre. The written version of this speech’s text disseminated by the White House does not contain Obama’s verbatim reference to consensual democracy. Accessed 12 July 2009: .

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Kwasi Wiredu and his critics

Helen Lauer

of democracy as consensual is reflected in the work of the philosopher Kwasi Wiredu. Over the last quarter of a century, Wiredu has been advocating adoption of precolonial Akan ideals of good governance in contemporary institutional practices. Not all of his published works are easy to access, however, which might account for the persistent and pervasive disparity between the claims mistakenly attributed to Wiredu’s political outlook, and the claims he has made and published about nonparty, multi-party, and one-party politics. The textual data canvassed here will not determine whether or not Wiredu is correct about the fitness of non-party politics in contemporary African democracies,3 nor whether he is right in saying that competitive multi-party campaigning is useless for facilitating good democratic governance on the African continent today. These issues are the focus of heated controversy and remain topics of extensive academic and parliamentarian debate, with important implications for constitutional amendment and local government reform. The aim of this essay is merely to clear away misconceptions that threaten to pre-empt the potential fruitfulness of such debates. It is important to recognise when humanities scholars have failed to distinguish bona fide sketches of indigenous African norms (norms which differentiate African political sensibilities from other historically antagonistic cultures of social justice and stewardship) from hackneyed Eurocentric projections of a pristine, by-gone, idyllic Africa. The two critics of Kwasi Wiredu to whom I am referring are the late Nigerian Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze and the Portugese Canadian Carlos Jacques. Dr. Eze’s work remains widely read by political scientists and literary critics. His essay “Democracy or Consensus? Response to Wiredu,” is published in a classic anthology that he edited and which is widely available on the internet.4 Dr. Jacques’ essay, “Alterity in the 3

Kwasi Wiredu's seminal critique of western multi-party politics (1998) is reprinted in several anthologies (1999; 2001). Also see Wiredu’s book (1996: 157-190); and less widely accessible papers (2001a; and 2001b).

4

In Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Oxford: Blackwell (1997) pp. 313-323. Reprinted online in the forum for intercultural philosophy series (2000) . [Accessed March 13, 2009] All citations here are to the online version published by Blackwell & polylog eV (2000).

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discourse of African philosophy: a forgotten absence,” was presented at a conference5 in Morocco, where he is well established as an exponent of North American and European post-structuralist scholarship and as a sub-Saharan Africanist in loco. Both of these essays are focussed on criticizing Wiredu’s advocacy of non-party politics in modern Africa. The main themes of their critiques are that (i) Wiredu’s advocacy of non-party politics functions just as well to defend single-party rule and with it the suppression of free speech and political opposition; and (ii) Wiredu indulges in romanticised fantasy through his accounts of pre-colonial Akan society. In what follows I will show that these criticisms depend upon a reading of Wiredu that ignores what he has actually expressed in his published works. First, a word about the sources relied upon here for illuminating Wiredu’s expressed views which contrast starkly with the interpretation of his claims presented by Eze and Jacques. Wiredu’s explicit defence of non-party politics and his depiction of indigenous norms of consensual democracy date back to the (1995) publication titled “Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics.” This article became widely accessible online in 2000 and is the chief focus of Dr. Eze’s (2000) critique which is also available at the same website, Forum for Intercultural Philosophy.6 Prior to 2000, Wiredu’s analysis of Akan political culture was most widely accessible in the final third part of his book titled Cultural Universals and Particulars: an African perspective (1996: 145-190). Dr. Jacques makes frequent reference to this book and to a seminal paper originally titled “The State, Civil Society and Democracy in Africa,”

5

The conference was titled Constructions of the Other in Inter-African Relations held 4-6th December, 2006 in Marrakech, Morocco, organised by the Institut des Etudes Africaines, Université Mohamed V, Rabat, and the paper is due to appear in the proceedings of that conference. With the author’s consent it has been preprinted in the comprehensive anthology edited by H. Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho, Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives, Chapter 57, Section 6 of Volume II, Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers.

6

[Accessed January 2009].

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which Wiredu presented at a conference in Abidjan in 1998.7 Wiredu’s views are further adumbrated in two less widely circulated but very effective essays which were evidently not available to Jacques or to Eze at the time they developed their critiques: “Tradition, Democracy and Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Africa” (2001a), and “Democracy by Consensus: Some Conceptual Considerations” (2001b). Wiredu further clarified points about consensual politics which he made in all of these works, when he delivered two keynote addresses, responded to questions from the audience, and subsequently held private discussions April 15-17th, 2009.8 His views have not varied substantively since those published in 1995.

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1. Historical realism or fantasy? Jacques (2006) contends that Wiredu confuses “myth” with “historical truth;” and that a “romanticised, illusory” image of pre-colonial African society as “communal or collectivist . . . inspires Wiredu’s work” (2006: p.8, 2nd paragraph).9 Jacques reads Wiredu as committing the same “unanimist illusion” as Paulin Hountondji (1996) accused Kwame Nkrumah of making in his romanticised version of pre-colonial Akan societies in Consciencism. But in his texts, Wiredu conjectures nothing like a purely harmonious ancient Akan society. On the contrary he points to “sharp disagreements that prevailed at all levels” and “various loci of disagreement and conflict . . . even within traditional councils” (1998: 246). Wiredu neither exaggerates nor romanticises the success of pre-colonial rule. Rather he remarks upon the self-evident contrast between notorious despots and celebrated non-despotic rulers of olden days (2001: 163). So it is not 7

Slightly revised, this essay was re-issued twice under the title “Society and Democracy in Africa,” in 1999 and 2001. It is reprinted under its original title in 2009 by editors Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho.

8

At the 7th Faculty of Arts Colloquium held at the University of Ghana, “The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity,” which will be published in the forthcoming Proceedings of that Colloquium.

9

All quotations of Jacques (2006) refer to passages in the unpublished paper cited in footnote 4 above, currently in press (forthcoming 2009).

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at all clear why the critics accuse Wiredu of fantasizing that harmony and unity were the hallmark of precolonial Akan society (Eze 2000; and Jacques 2006). Further, Wiredu elaborates that without the known existence of conflicting points of view throughout an ancient Akan community, there would be no need to seek a consensual compromise over what to do through protracted deliberation under the trees: “Deliberation need not always lead to compromise” (1998: 247). Against the backdrop of Wiredu’s traditional political scenery, the sustained expression of a diversity of viewpoints is essential to representing a community. And of course this would have to be the case. To stress, as Wiredu does, that the key virtue of traditional Akan politics lay in the elder council members’ “will to consensus” (2001: 171) would be pointless among elders assumed to be manipulable or already in perfect agreement. Nor is the ideal goal of protracted discussion the dissolution of opposing views; on Wiredu’s account, the goal of consensus-building is the resolve of what will be done, juxtaposed alongside the myriad of enduring opinions about what should be done or would be ideal to do. “Agreement here need not be construed as unanimity . . . about what ought to be done . . . only about what is to be done” (1998: 243).10 Wiredu is consistent in spelling out the definitive contrast between ‘compromise’ in its negative senses of relinquishing one’s beliefs or abandoning one’s values on the one hand, versus decisional consensus which requires reaching a practical compromise to determine collectively what will be done to construct policies serving all the individuals effected. Wiredu states explicitly that elders in council can compromise in practical matters of determining “what is to be done,” without forsaking their differences of opinion “about what is true or false” and what they variously think ideally ought to be done (1998: 242; 1999: 35). In order to illuminate how the compromises required for decision making do not entail any suppression whatsoever of divergent beliefs and values, Wiredu took care to delineate these several senses of consensus in all the 10 Delineating three senses of consensus mistakenly conflated by critics was reinforced by Wiredu during discussion at the Legon Faculty of Arts Colloquium, April 15-16, 2009.

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published texts cited here. Thus Wiredu repeatedly distinguishes “consensus on normative and cognitive issues” from “decisional consensus” (1998: 243; 1999: 33; 2001a: 169; 2001b: 235-237; and in his keynote address delivered April 15, 2009). Thus a careful reading of Wiredu’s account of consensual procedure in traditional polities should obviate the pro-democratic anxiety that Jacques has voiced: viz. that non-party consensual decision making risks suppressing individual points of view. In fact, to Wiredu’s way of understanding traditional Akan political ideals, prioritizing individuals’ needs and entitlements was, and remains, the very crux and purpose of communitarian ethos.11

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2. Non-party ≠ one-party polity Jacques is unconvinced by the communitarian ethos. He finds no substantive difference between Wiredu’s reasons for rejecting multi-party politics and the early Africanist nationalists’ ideological defence of oneparty rule. According to Jacques, the celebrated early nationalists (including Cabral, Ki-Zerbo, Kenyatta, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Toure, Sithole) depicted electoral politics as un-African and antithetical to traditional communal ethos. They proposed that the resurrection of African identity depended upon a return to the essential, original African harmony and unity that had been trampled by colonialism. Jacques says: “except for the name, one-party and non-party political structures are identical.” And since history shows that the myth of lost African unity was used as a rhetorical justification to suppress political association and press freedom, Jacques regards both models as equally dangerous vehicles of tyranny through the “exclusion of individuals or groups who do not fit the communal norm.” Whether it is accurate to analyse the political thought of all the early African nationalists en masse cannot be tested in this compass. Nonetheless it is hard to reconcile Jacques’ conflation of Wiredu’s actual statements in defence of non-party politics with the mid-twentieth century 11 Wiredu in conversation with the author, April 17 2009, Philosophy Department, University of Ghana, Legon.

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nationalists’ justifications for one-party rule, as the following considerations will attest. In all his essays and in conversation, Wiredu repeatedly and explicitly disparages one-party politics and the ideological fig leaves used by early nationalists to cover their brute stronghold upon power when they suppressed political party opposition (1998: 251; 1999: 41; 2001a: 163167; 2001b: 240). Wiredu is adamantly opposed to the suppressions of press freedom and political association that make possible the formation of effective political parties. In all versions of Wiredu’s seminal essay, “State, Civil Society and Democracy in Africa,” (1998, 1999, 2001), which Jacques quotes throughout his critique, Wiredu explicitly distinguished his non-party vision from one-party politics.

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In concluding this advocacy of a non-party system of politics, I would like to dissociate myself from any concealed hankering after a one-party system. This is especially necessary since some politicians have been known to use the banner of the nonparty idea. The fundamental difference . . . is that the [non-party system] embraces the freedom of political association while the [one-party system] execrates it. (1999: 43; 1998: 251)

Wiredu also discusses at length the danger of “one-party states” being created “de facto . . . by ambitious power seekers . . . under the guise of no-party rhetoric” (2001b: 240). In his arguments for non-party politics, Wiredu actually spells out in greater detail than does Jacques or Eze the contemporary threats to constructive political process posed by “one-party chicanery” (2001b: 242). At one point in his writing Wiredu described one-party systems as even worse than multi-party systems, since on the latter electoral scene “. . . there is at least an appearance, though often only an appearance, of press freedom. In the unlamented era of the one-party system, not even an appearance of press freedom existed” (2001a: 167). Going further in defence of Jacques’ own substantive concerns about the potentials of one-party rule for undermining political legitimacy in Africa (2001a: 166), Wiredu illuminates the current temptation to confuse the pretences of democratic deliverance to Africans with the antics 180

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of contemporary “pseudo-democratic power holders” who manipulate “majoritarian rule” and “simulate popular consent” to suit the interests of their “well-financed backers” (2001a: 168).

3. Valuable heritage or anachronistic superstition?

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Chukwudi Eze’s critique might be regarded as more theory-entrenched than the objections voiced by Carlos Jacques, if one compares their respective rejections of Wiredu’s approach to solving contemporary African political problems by appealing to ancient Akan norms. Eze presupposes the widely received model of society that assumes economic class conflict is an inherent feature in the evolution of social structure. Eze argues that precolonial people’s naïve confidence in their own unity as a community is irrelevant to the quest for good governance in modern Africa. He further invalidates that naïve confidence in its own right, speculating that the historic African reverence for communal unity was an ideological fabrication espoused by the olden-day power establishment of chiefs, councils of elders, priests and auxiliary conservers of traditional myth and magic who retained an interest in sustaining the status quo. If the traditional mythological origins and justifications of consensual politics can no longer hold today (due to secularisation and religious pluralisms, for example) . . . then we may have to (re)invent usable . . . mythologies. For . . . a secular political institution, if it renounces brute force . . . needs some sort of mythology . . . in order to endure (Eze 2000: paragraphs 16, 19).

Eze demonstrates the irrelevance of traditional rule by recounting examples that display how differently from the precolonial days African people now understand themselves and the conflicts in which they are caught up. Eze is impressed that Africans today have been secularised (2001: paragraph 21)—by which he seems to mean they have been enlightened. Conflicts appear insoluble nowadays because the combatants believe, and believe correctly, that their economic interests and survival needs are genuinely and diametrically opposed. Eze cites many 181

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examples including the crisis in the Niger Delta where the very existence of the Ogoni people is pitted against the priorities of company shareholders and police employed by Mobil, Shell and Chevron Oil companies drilling in the area (2000: paragraph 21). Everyday life in West Africa has become migratory, predatory, culturally complex, and so challenging that individuals are no longer mystified by superstitious beliefs about their “shared and common past and future as it was [formerly] carried forward in the myths of origins” (2000: paragraph 16). Eze says African people no longer believe in the sacred powers of their chiefs, whose authority used to be legitimised by the belief that they are divine links with the ancestors. It was the magico-mythological beliefs in ancestral power that Eze says legitimated traditional African authority. So he concludes that the ancient Akan style of leadership has lost irreparably its former utility (2000: paragraph 16). Eze argues further that it is unrealistic to suppose consensual politics was ever really effective in precolonial Akan society just because everyone recognised their common interests and shared a “rational belief in the power of reason.” Eze chides Wiredu that if he thinks Akan chiefs and their subjects in ancient times “actually” (2000: paragraph 15) had this much contemporary sense so as to believe in the “virtue of the persuasiveness of ideas,” (2000: paragraph 13) then he “might need further evidence to make a successful case” of it—by which Eze implies he is having none of it. The endless debating of the elders was tolerated most likely because these rituals of governance were conducted in the hocus-pocus atmosphere of ancestral power and spiritual forces, so that people believed naively—Levy-Bruhl would have said they believed prelogically—that they were bound together in a mystical unity. Eze’s complaints against Wiredu’s model of ancient Akan consensual politics are especially instructive because Eze overlooks an elementary yet fundamental difference between empirical conditions of governance, including the populace’s shared views of their leadership at different historical moments on the one hand, and normative principles that legitimate a specified form of leadership, independently of particular times and places and prevailing popular beliefs, on the other. The thesis that Wiredu is elaborating when he narrates Akan society concerns the legitimacy and feasibility of adopting a timeless and enduring politi182

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cal ethos inherited from precolonial times. In assessing the plausibility of Wiredu’s argument, therefore, the problem is not whether Wiredu attributes an inordinate amount of contemporary common sense to the ancients. It doesn’t matter because the legitimacy of any society’s governing institutions does not depend upon the fact of what this or that person actually believes at a given time. Eze doesn’t see this. Instead he writes that Wiredu’s otherwise admirable contrast between secular beliefs in reason vs. ancient ideas about the divine may “undermine the very belief systems that made possible the ‘consensual’ politics of the past . . .” (Eze 2000: paragraph 18). This misses the point of Wiredu’s recursion to Akan political norms of the distant past: he is not interested in the popular beliefs and related material conditions that “made possible” the practice of consensual politics; he is interested in what normatively legitimises its practice—then, as now.

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4. Description ≠ legitimisation To make the erring conflation committed by Eze quite plain, consider two contemporary examples that illuminate clearly the contrast between popular belief and the appropriate basis for legitimizing state authority. Many English people in 1997 believed their Princess Diana was protected in some special way, and that her death in a car crash—whether by murder or accident—was particularly heinous just because she was a royal. It wasn’t believed by vast swathes of Britons to be just like any car crash, deliberate or accidental. Yet in fact natural laws determining the effects of collision at accelerated speeds are indifferent to pedigree. So too are the laws governing criminal prosecution in England; they are legitimate insofar as they are drafted to apply equally to all subjects of the British Crown, regardless of the victim’s and perpetrator’s social status or genealogy, and regardless of commoners’ beliefs about the British royals’ entitlement to special dispensation of the courts. Again, consider that when the Cold War folly reached its peak in the 1980s, many American fundamentalists believed they would be moved up literally in the Holy Rapture away from the hellfire affected by a potential nuclear apocalypse. These convictions were encouraged by the publicised fact that Born Again government appointees were issued official ID cards 183

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entitling them to helicopter transport out of the Washington DC area in the event of a nuclear attack.12 The Silent Majority believed God inspired their president to build a programme of nuclear proliferation; their confidence was encouraged by frequent televised proximity of Ronald Reagan with the original TV-evangelist Billy Graham. Yet as strong and persuasive as these beliefs may have been for the vast majority of voters at the time, their convictions did not definitively legitimate Reagan’s Star Wars in a normative sense. Nor were such popular beliefs causally responsible for legitimating the laws that allowed for the elitist policy and capricious, poorly conceived practices within the executive branch of that federal government during the years of his administration. Prevailing public opinion never legitimises a prevailing system of governance in the sense of legitimacy that concerns Wiredu when he advocates non-party consensus for Africans and rejects the popular cut and thrust of multi-party democracy.13 If we follow Eze’s instructions to reflect upon “what makes one political opinion more persuasive than the other” (2000: paragraph 18) at a given time, we will be committing the fallacy of appeal to the masses, and will never discover whether legitimacy is accorded a specific system of governance by the standard principles or criteria that generally bestow such legitimacy. Such principles will spell out the concepts of responsibility, just authority, accountability, impartiality, rule of law, constitutionality, respect for individual civic rights, provision of social welfare, equal treatment, economic trust, due process, fair trial, protection of person and property. At this point, someone of Eze’s persuasion might well ask: So what does legitimizing a model of governance consist of, if not the beliefs 12 In the Rapture. Documentary on the Reagan administration produced by Larry Josephson for Pacifica Radio WBAI, broadcast and distributed on tape in New York City, 1985. 13 Nor is prevailing opinion causally responsible for what makes a system of government work effectively—although it is certainly true that if people are sufficiently motivated and well organised, and legally entitled in other ways, prevailing political opinion can make life for those working in government atrociously difficult. For instance by 1987 the nuclear weapons warship docked in New York Harbour had to be turned into a naval museum thanks to thousands of signatures on a citizens’ petition.

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about these concepts that are shared among the very people who are the living subjects of an actual government in practice? Eze complains that Wiredu seems to “suggest that it is the logical power of the ideas presented” which justify a form of governance. Indeed the power of legitimacy is ‘logical’, broadly speaking. The principles legitimating governance are the deductive general antecedents of statements that describe the practices and policies enacted by a system that is legitimate because these descriptions follow logically from the accepted starting principles. To think otherwise may be to confuse a normative relation between a principle and the practice it supports, with the contingent relation of cause and effect. Suppose you believe along with Eze that the causes of legitimacy reside literally in the fact that certain beliefs occurred to citizens living at specific times and places. And suppose that the effects of some people having these beliefs were the subsequent intentions and related actions of other people who were ruling over them at some distance but more or less contemporaneously with the approving, adoring attitudes of their subjects. That account of legitimising governance is as good an example of magical and superstitious thinking as any you are likely to find.

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5. Practical considerations The foregoing discussion compels us to consider afresh the reasons that Wiredu himself gives for preferring non-party politics to multi-party politics. Wiredu’s arguments for non-party consensual governance are chiefly utilitarian, not sentimental or essentialist, contrary to his critics’ say-so. He says Africans stand to benefit from norms of governance that have not been perverted by the excesses of capitalism. He proposes traditional norms of consensus as a genuine and legitimate alternative to capitalists’ political contests for short term exclusionary power (2001: 162). Whatever shortfalls there may be in Wiredu’s outline of non-party political procedure in a modern nation-state, his critique is spot-on when he highlights the dysfunctions and incoherencies intrinsic to electoral politics as conducted in the US and the UK. As Wiredu depicts quite accurately, in those politically self-defeating technocracies, compromise 185

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is the mark of political impotence.14 The strength and desirability of elected representatives is measured characteristically by their capacity to stall, obstruct, thwart, if not to obliterate the effectiveness of their opposition party rivals (1998: 246-7). Yet in those “culture[s] of conflict,” the very raison d’être of a political party vanishes without a robust opposition to pit against and knock around. Multi-party electoral practices are oligarchic, deceitful, and rabidly divisive in ways that Africans struggling in besieged economies can ill afford.

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Conclusion The purpose of this essay has been to appreciate the degree to which experts in African political thought can fail to represent one particular interpretation of democracy, one that is explicitly indigenous to Africa, an interpretation of democracy to which the first African American US president tacitly paid tribute in his first speech on the African continent. This interpretation has been valuated not for its veracity in describing the irretrievably distant past, so much as for its utility in Wiredu’s political prescription for African democracies in the idealistic future. It remains acutely controversial whether non-party politics would be advisable or even feasible as a means for delivering democratic governance effectively in modern Ghana. Some have argued that formal recapture of vestigial chieftaincy structures, practices, and sentiments, is harmful: reversion to chieftaincy is likely to further eclipse the project of building a sufficiently progressive, strong state apparatus in a modern democracy, without which African nations will remain incapable of serving even the most basic needs of their citizens.15 It should be noted that both of the critical political African philosophers discussed here emphasise that pre-colonial systems of governance are inappropriate for modern day Africa. But as part of a basis for rejecting Wiredu’s arguments for non-party politics, this truism is inap14 The current US President Obama seems to be exceptional in this respect, given his magnanimous diplomatic approach to formerly shunned foreign heads of state. 15 See Kwame Ninsin (2007). Yao Graham stressed the debilitating effects of sustaining the legacy of chieftaincy in modern African states in his Comments on the occasion of “Kwame Nkrumah at 100: Lessons for African leadership,” at the Great Hall, University of Ghana, Legon. April 9, 2010.

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propriately applied, since nowhere does Wiredu suggest, even remotely, that traditional structures of chieftaincy could or should be recruited to run Ghana today. It’s impossible, he says.16 Yet reflection and debate about the ways in which indigenous African principles of governance may inspire the contemporary ideal and practice of good governance, remains an acute and compelling controversy.17 So the motivation for correcting gross error in the secondary literature goes beyond a penchant for scrupulous scholarship; nor is it a strategy for polishing one side of an argument to appear more attractive than the other. For what is at stake here is the general utility of academic debate as a source of inspiration and clarification actualising the near and distant political future. There is a very specific, substantive reason to keep alive the African controversy over appropriate political leadership. The model of precolonial African governance that Wiredu drafts in his historiographical accounts—whether he has done so accurately or otherwise—is not a sketch of a frozen relic, but of a system that has been in process and changing before and throughout colonialism. It continues to transform and to be transformed by society ever since. Models of governance indigenous to Ghana, as in other parts of Africa, have not only been coerced by and embroiled with notorious colonial mannerisms and schemes of tyranny, but they have also developed in defiance of those mannerisms and schemes. So it is that, in order to remain intact and effective, the most compelling and potent aspects of indigenous rule must be hidden from the international gaze—hidden in the sense that their utility and intrinsic values are neither readily detectable first hand nor readily describable through the lenses and vocabularies afforded to those who use as their mother tongue the international languages of former colonisers. 16 Kwasi Wiredu in conversation, July 26, 2009. 17 For vigorous and intensively argued perspectives that disparage the norms of traditional chieftaincy for building strong democratic institutions in Ghana today, see Kwame Ninsin (2007) and Kojo Amanor (2006). At the 2009 Business Ethics Network-Africa Conference (GIMPA, Accra) it was concluded that indigenous African values and norms ought to be more substantively integrated into the vocabulary and conceptualisation of good corporate governance. See .

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In other words, to know what needs correction, and to appreciate what needs protection, preservation, and reinforcement in the forms of political power that have subdued and managed the colonial encounter and its residual effects for all these years, is to share in a particular tradition that is neither static nor outmoded, but has evolved and continues to evolve over time, influenced by the unfolding events of geo-politics and of domestic history. This is why relying upon outsiders to assess one’s national progress in the deliverance of good governance in Africa is doomed to fail. The capacity to reflect upon and to critique Akan political ideals is part of an inheritance specific to people who share this inside, tacit knowledge of at least two kinds of political culture.18 Sharing this privileged access provides one with an insider’s knowledge of how to govern as well as how not to govern. If there is any moral to this tale, it is that scholars should avoid dismissing too readily a point of view that fails to reflect the same homogenized images and interpretations of African needs as those which are purveyed in the global arena.

References

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Amanor, Kojo S. 2006. Customary land, mobile labor and alienation in the Eastern Region of Ghana. In Land and the politics of belonging in West Africa. R. Kuba and C. Lenz (Eds.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 137-160. Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi. 1997. Democracy or Consensus? Response to Wiredu. In Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Ed.) Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 313-323. Reprinted online in the forum for intercultural philosophy series (2000) . [Accessed March 13, 2009]. Hountondji, Paulin. 1996. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Henri Evans (Trans.) Second edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jacques, Carlos T. 2006. Alterity in the discourse of African philosophy: a forgotten absence. Constructions of the Other in Inter-African Relations. Proceedings of the conference held 4-6th December, 2006 in Marrakech, Morocco, organised by the Institut des Etudes Africaines, Université Mohamed V, Rabat. Reprinted 18 It exists on the “boundary or frontier” between two kinds of political culture. Again I borrow Alisdair MacIntyre’s image for the location of a person “growing up as a full member of two linguistic communities” (1987: 388).

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with permission of the author in Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities Through African perspectives. Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho (Eds.) Accra: Sub Saharan Press, 2010. MacIntyre, Alisdair. 1987. Relativism, Power, and Philosophy. Reprinted in After Philosophy: End or Transformation? (Eds.) Kenneth Baynes et al. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 385-411. Ninsin, Kwame. 2007. Ghana at 50: Tribe or Nation? Ghana Speaks Lecture/Seminar series of the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG). Commissioned and delivered initially in Accra: Ghana@50 Jubilee Lecture series. March. Reprinted in Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives, as Chapter 63, Section 7, Volume II. (eds) H. Lauer and K. Anyidoho. Accra: SubSaharan Press. Obama, Barack. 2009. Text of Obama’s speech to parliament as prepared for delivery and provided by the White House. Delivered July 11, Accra: International Conference Centre. [Accessed July 12, 2009]. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1995. Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics: A Plea for a Non-party Polity. The Centennial Review. 39(1). . [Accessed June 15, 2009].

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Wiredu, Kwasi. 1998. The State, Civil Society and Democracy in Africa. Delivered to the international colloquium of the same name at University of AbidjanCocody, Ivory Coast, July 13-18, 1998. First printed under this title in a special issue of the colloquium proceedings in Quest. An International Journal of Philosophy XII(1) June. 1998: 241-252. A version appears as Society and Democracy in Africa. 1999. New Political Science. 21(1): 33-44. This second titled paper was reprinted in Explorations in African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics. Teodros Kiros (Ed.) New York: Routledge (2001). It was reprinted again as The State, Civil Society and Democracy in Africa, as Chapter 60, Section 7, Volume II in Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives. Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho (Eds.) 2010. Accra: SubSaharan Press. Wiredu, Kwasi. 2001a. Tradition, Democracy and Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Africa. In Rewriting Africa: Toward Renaissance or Collapse? Japan Centre for Area Studies JCAS Symposium series no. 14. Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology, pp. 161-172. Wiredu, Kwasi. 2001b. Democracy by Consensus: Some Conceptual Considerations. Philosophical Papers (South Africa). November. 30(3): 227-244. Wiredu, Kwasi. 2009. The Humanities and the Idea of National Identity; and Empiricalism: the empirical character of an African thought. Keynote addresses at the The Humanities and the Construction of National Identity. Seventh Annual Faculty of Arts Colloquium April 15-16th 2009. University of Ghana, Legon. In Nationality meets Identity: Voices from the Humanities. Selected Proceedings. Nana Aba Amfo, Jemima Anderson and H. Lauer (Eds.) Accra: SubSaharan Press, 2010. Reprinted as the first two chapters in this anthology.

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea Identity Crises: Constructions of National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea Joanna Boampong

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This paper examines ways in which the idea of a ‘national identity’ is problematized in the literature of Equatorial Guinea. Rather than espousing a given notion of what constitutes or what should constitute national identity, the selected poems show the complex processes that undergird attempts at identity construction on whatever level, be it personal or collective. In the specific case of Equatoguinean poets, the literary artists negotiate their way through reflections on their experiences and events in their country, engaging with ever-present reality (Soyinka 1969) as well as exercising their creative imagination. How then do these writers reconcile the socio-politico-historical realities of their nation with the aesthetic creative enterprise that they must carry out as poets? To what extent does the one impel the other? Arguably, the poetry examined in this paper exemplifies primarily the notion that “identity is a production which is never complete, always in process” (Hall 1994: 392).

In considering the theme of the colloquium, “Humanities and the Idea of National Identity,” debates surrounding what the term “identity” signifies invariably come into play. While the idea that the term denotes a given state, a pre-existing or fixed condition may be somewhat justifiable, the general consensus is that the term denotes a process towards a condition which is not static, but rather a process under constant transformation. In the case of Equatorial Guinea it appears that these two positions are actually pitted against each other in the construction of national identity. The intricate nature of the formulation and construction of this national identity is underscored in the literature and poetry of Equatorial Guinea which seems to engage the stance taken by the 190

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

State, which is that a national identity is founded on given, pre-existing elements taken from traditional cultural practices to the exclusion of other influences which form part of the cultural heritage of Equatorial Guinea. Even as these writers attempt to put forward the value in viewing national identity in less categorical terms, they must also contend with obstacles that the State has put up in defence of its position. Thus, evidence of a struggle emerges in the poetry of Equatorial Guinea—a struggle, albeit indirect, to do away with established notions put forth by the State, and a quest for more progressive terms within which to consider constructions of national identity. Donato Ndongo’s1 description of the conditions under which his nation’s citizens and writers live and carry out their creative enterprise exposes the problematic underlying constructions of national identity. When he points out that:

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(H)ace un decenio señalaba las principales dificultades con las que nos encontramos los escritores de Guinea Ecuatorial: la falta de libertad de expresión, el dirigismo cultural, la concepción, desde el oficialismo, de la literatura y de la cultura como modos estáticos, anclados exclusivamente en el pasado, en las tradiciones de nuestros antepasados. Por desgracia, tales tendencias se han acentuado, al mismo tiempo que el régimen del general Teodoro Obiang Nguema ha ido encerrándose en sí mismo, incapaz de liberar las energías del pueblo hacia una tarea creadora, dinámica y renovadora del pensamiento y de las formas de expresión de ese pensamiento (2001: 513).2 1

Donato Ndongo, an Equatoguinean currently living in exile in Spain, may be credited with launching the literature of Equatorial Guinea into world view. A writer, journalist and critic, his writings include poetry, narratives, short stories, and essays relating to Equatorial Guinea and literature as a whole. His Las tinieblas de tu memoria negra (1985) received Spain’s prestigious Premio Sésamo award in 1987 and earned much deserved critical acclaim. He has actively promoted the writings of budding writers from Equatorial Guinea as attested by two anthologies he has produced on the literature of Equatorial Guinea.

2

Interference of the Equatoguinean State in cultural affairs is exemplified in the Head of State, Teodoro Obiang’s sponsored “Primer Congreso Internacional hispánico-africano de cultura that took place in Bata in 1984. See Eliza Rizo’s “Discursive Formation of ‘African Tradition’ in Equatorial Guinea’s Official Nationalism.”

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

About a decade ago, I pointed out the main difficulties facing us Equatoguinean writers: lack of freedom of expression, intervention of the state in culture, the notion, on the part of the ruling party, that literature and culture are static, anchored exclusively in the past, in the traditions of our ancestors. Unfortunately, these tendencies have intensified at the

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same time as General Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s regime has become inward looking, incapable of freeing the energies of the people toward a responsibility of creative, dynamic and innovative thinking and the forms of expressing that thinking.3

Ndongo effectively underscores the limitations imposed on the Equatoguinean writer as well as the State’s interest and consequent interference in the literary production of the country. Thus, for Equatoguinean writers in general and poets in particular, the already complicated process involved in formulating a national identity is further compounded by the precarious conditions prevailing in their country, which in turn have a direct bearing on their literary endeavours. As the poetry we examine here shows, key issues to be considered in a meaningful debate about constructions of national identity include the following: negotiating between the legacies of Spanish colonial rule and the traditional heritage, continued dictatorial rule and its attendant lack of basic freedoms, exile, and globalisation. I argue that given their country appears to be in a state of flux—a situation that has led many of these poets into exile—the literary constructions of their own identities and their nation are mediated by factors as much from within as from without. In essence, the whole exercise becomes a revolt, a vision, a quest. Contrary to the position taken by the State, Ndongo has communicated the awareness of Equatoguinean poets, which is that Equatorial Guinea’s associations with its former colonial master, Spain, are impossible to disavow. Thus Ndongo proclaims: Guinea Equatorial está habitada por africanos cuyo idioma común es el español o el castellano. Su incipiente literatura debe 3

All translations mine except otherwise indicated.

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

ser enmarcada, consiguientemente, en el ámbito de las literaturas negroafricanas; ahí radica su originalidad, o su particularidad, dentro del conjunto de las literaturas hispánicas. (2000: 31). Equatorial Guinea is inhabited by Africans whose common language is Spanish or Castillian. Its incipient literature must therefore be framed within the context of African literatures; therein lies its originality or peculiarity within the totality of Hispanic literatures.

Echoing Ndongo’s assertion above, Constantino Ocha’a Mve Bengobesama in his “Semblanzas de la hispanidad” (Portraits of Hispanity) declares:

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La colonización ha dado origen, evidentemente, a una civilización peculiar que es la guineidad, la cual implica un mestizaje espiritual, sicológico, racial y cultural. La guineadad es, por tanto, producto del encuentro histórico de una civilización de siglos con los grupos étnicos autóctonos del territorio guineano. Es cierto que la guineidad contiene diversidad de aportes culturales (contiene elementos anglófonos, lusitanos, cameruneses, etc.); sin embargo, lo característico y esencial es lo hispánico y el acervo cultural bantú). (1985: 161) Colonisation has evidently given birth to the distinctive civilisation of “guineidad” which implies a spiritual, psychological, racial and cultural miscegenation. “Guineidad” is, therefore, a product of the historical encounter between a civilisation of many centuries and indigenous ethnic groups from Guinea. Granted “guineidad” represents a diversity of cultural influences (it has Anglophone, Lusophone and Cameroonian elements, etc); however its characteristic and essential trait is the Hispanic and Bantu cultural heritage.

Perhaps more telling, in the above affirmations, is the awareness of the decidedly hybrid nature of the literature of Equatorial Guinea. As Ndongo and Bengobesama note, it straddles both African and Hispanic cultures and literatures. Thus, and as Ndongo further reiterates, it is impossible to understand the literature of Equatorial Guinea without taking into account the elements of “africanidad” or “guineidad” and “hispanidad” which form its integral components. The assertions by 193

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

Ndongo and Bengobesama, consciously or unconsciously, evoke the historical trajectory that their country has travelled; and at the same time they underscore the fact that Spain’s active presence in Equatorial Guinea from 1858 until 1968 (and in various ways thereafter) cannot be erased from its store of knowledge and experience. In establishing the inextricable link between history and literature, the aforementioned writers seem to subscribe to Wole Soyinka’s idea that, by their art, writers carry out a “unique reflection on experience and events” (1969: 15) and a sustained engagement with “ever-present reality” (1969: 16). Thus, in their formulation and articulation of their nation and its identity, the nation’s history—both in the past and in the making of it in the present everyday—must be accounted for. What then is Equatorial Guinea’s “ever-present reality” (to borrow Soyinka’s words) which, in addition to its history, effectively forms the basis upon which the nation’s poets carry out their literary projects and play their parts in the construction of national identity? How do these poets, as literary theorists and critics, address the idea of national identity? How do they conceptualise it? How do they problematise it? Indeed, how do they formulate it? In their anthology of the literature of Equatorial Guinea, Mbare Ngom and Donato Ndongo identify three key periods in the historical trajectory of the country and the corresponding literary works that engage them. These include the literature of the colonial period, literature during the dictatorship and literature after the first dictatorship. After overcoming initial challenges presented by the introduction of European elements into indigenous literary traditions, the poetry of the colonial period in Equatorial Guinea has mainly the country, the culture and the people themselves as its reflective focus. Juan Chema Mijero’s poem “León de África” for example presents Equatorial Guinea as a sleeping king, the pride of Africa and a shining beacon. Exhorting the country within the background of its natural elements, the poet urges the abandonment of savage customs and cruelty to embrace a love for Humanity: dejen sus formas y costumbres salvajes muchísimos de tus hijos. 194

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Joanna Boampong

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Demuéstrales caridad, infúndeles con ideales amor a la Humanidad to leave their savage ways and customs a lot of your children. Show them charity instill in them ideals a love for Humanity

As seen in the above extract, the poet communicates a need for change, a change from specific elements of the traditional culture that are deleterious, to more universal ideals such as charity, love and humanity. The poet further urges Equatorial Guinea, and by extension its people, not to lose hope but rather to embrace the civilisation that Spain offers. Spain is presented as “la noble nación”, (the noble nation), “la nación madre” (the mother nation) who offers protection and redemption. It is worthwhile noting the positive terms in which Spain is presented in this poem given that it appeared in 1964, four years to the end of Spain’s colonial rule. The poet goes as far as to declare “¡¡Viva España!!” (Long live Spain!!). While, based on this assertion, it could be argued that the poet may be showing evidence of complete acculturation, it is also worth noting that in the same breath he declares “¡¡Viva Guinea!!” Thus, what the poet seems to be underscoring is the importance of both nations to the project of development and civilisation, and consequently to the construction of national identity. According to Ndogo and Ngom (2000: 18) the literature of Equatorial Guinea follows a totally different trajectory from that of other African literatures in general. Perhaps the most noteworthy difference is the absence of an anti-colonial literature. This has been attributed to three key factors, namely: the fact that Spain’s policy of isolation prevented the entry of nationalist ideas from neighbouring countries into Equatorial Guinea, the absence of cultural interaction between Equatorial Guinea and the different European colonies in Africa, and the absence of Spanish translations of texts produced in the Diaspora. However, when later most of these poets became familiar with ideological movements such as Négritude, they did not subscribe to them. As Ndongo explains: 195

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

. . . mientras ellos pugnan por liberarse de los complejos en que les sumió la alienación para terminar por que el africano es un hombre como el resto de los hombres sobre la tierra, proponemos ya desde un principio la construcción de una cultura nacional directamente entroncada con la cultura universal, sin que se tenga que pagar los gravísimos costes del despertar de la alienación (2001: 37). . . . while they (advocates of negritude) strive to free themselves from the complexes alienation brought them to finally that the African is a human being like the rest of the people on the earth, we propose, right from the start, the construction of a national culture directly linked to universal culture, without having to pay the high cost of awaking from alienation.

Thus, in the construction of a national culture directly linked to universal culture, these poets ultimately perceive their national identity in universal terms and without any complexes. The identification of the nation with universal ideals is further expounded in Ciriaco Bokesa’s “Isla Verde” (Green Island). In a tone that is as hopeful as it is exhorting, the poet sees Equatorial Guinea in terms of beauty, hope, peace, and liberty. The poet further urges:

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Ahora que el mundo canta romances de luna, y África entona en Sí MAYOR su CANCIÓN no desafines la verbena común. isla verde, isla de mis sueños… Now that the world is singing moon ballads and Africa is singing in tune in C major its SONG do not be out of tune with the communal festival green island island of my dreams . . .

The move toward a fraternity with the world as a whole cannot be denied in the above lines and this may lead one to characterise the poem 196

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

as conformist. Nevertheless, it is evident that the vision of the poet for his country is one of confidence, of faith and the hope of a legitimate place within the world order. The poets’ visions of hope and identification with Spain and the world at large, however, are severely tested with the events that unfold in the period after colonisation. After its independence on October 12 1968, exactly 476 years after Columbus reached the shores of the Americas, Equatorial Guinea has been under the rule of two dictatorships. As has been fairly noted by critics, it was first ruled by Francisco Macías Nguema whom, according to Mbare Ngom, “escudándose tras el discurso africanizante que imperaba en aquel entonces, instauró una de las dictaduras más feroces del continente africano” (2000: 20) (hiding behind the rhetoric of africanisation which prevailed in those times, installed one of the most vicious dictatorships of the African continent). As a result of the repressive atmosphere characterised by a system of votes for posts, corruption, tribalism and nepotism, the country became “un gigantesco campo de concentración”, una “Gran Jaula” (a gigantic concentration camp, a Big Cage). The economic, social, political and cultural trauma that Equatoguineans suffer as a result of this is eloquently captured in Mbare Ngom’s introduction to Literatura de Guinea Ecuatorial: Antología which he co-authored with Donato Ndongo. But perhaps more pertinent to this discussion is his observation that “El régimen de Francisco Macías se ensañó con los intelectuales (maestros, profesores y los trabajadores de la cultura) que fueron perseguidos y eliminados de forma sistemática”. Francisco Macías’ regime vented its fury on the intellectuals (schoolteachers, lecturers and people who worked in cultural affairs) who were systematically persecuted and eliminated. As Mbare Ngom rightly notes, it was an eleven year period of cultural drought when, what Ngūgī wa Thiong’o describes as the “Culture of Silence and Fear” (1985: 38), led to a situation when not even one word was printed by the Equatoguinean press. During this period, referred to by Ndongo as “los años de silencio” and in turn by Ciriaco Bokesa Napo as “la época de mutis” (the years/ period of silence), the only ‘literature’ that was produced in the country was one that paid homage to the President in the name of nationalism. Referred to as “Nguemismo,” this discourse sought to depict the Presi197

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

dent in messianic terms even when as a “result of pilferage, ignorance and neglect” basic infrastructure such as electricity, water, hospitals, roads and transportation were practically nonexistent. A form of nationalism was put in place that rejected all forms of Spanish influence—hitherto the basis of religion, education and literary creativity—and thereby led to the cessation of cultural and intellectual activity in the country. This nationalistic discourse of “guineidad” imposed by the authorities, was totally different in spirit and impetus from that proposed by writers such as Bengobesama. Consequently it became the hegemonic centre on the periphery of which grew an alternate underground literature of exile. In fulfilling its responsibility of engaging the prevailing realities of the country, this also exemplifies the precarious state within which the national identity of Equatorial Guinea had to be constructed. As we can see, there arises a divergence of ideology between Macías’ conception of “guineidad” and that of the poet: the former sees “guineidad” as a phenomenon that must affect an erasure of part of the country’s history—the civilising mission of la hispanidad, and the latter considering that very historic encounter to be a fundamental aspect of its vitality. Thus, the question of identity becomes extremely topical in the poetry of Equatorial Guinea, especially that which was produced during and after Macías’ dictatorship. In various ways the poets problematise what constitutes their personal and national identity, given their position as outcasts in their own lands and as exiles in Spain. For Juan Balboa Boneke, liberty is a basic element for the construction of self and national identity which remains elusive. When in the first part of his “O Bulahelea (Deseo De Libertad)” (Desire for Liberty) the poet proclaims: Libertad, libertad, deseada, y también rechazada, temida y combatida, esperanza de tantos que, como yo, miran al mañana

Liberty, liberty, desired, and also rejected, feared and combated, hope of so many who, like me, look to the future

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Joanna Boampong

Here the whole traumatic experience of the persecution and silencing of the intellectuals in his country during Macías’ dictatorship is evoked. For although not explicitly stated one cannot be mistaken as to who is in fear of—rejects and combats—liberty, and who desires and hopes for it. For his part, Anacleto Oló Mibuy directly addresses the question of identity in his poem “Hispania.” In taking into account the confluence of Bantu and Hispanic elements in the constitution of the Equatoguinean, the poem reminisces on its implications not only for the present but also for the future. Somos guineanos We are Guineans de amores frágiles of fragile Equatorial ecuatoriales, loves y bastardías hispanas and Spanish illegitimates Somos los que dicen We are those who say tres palabras en bantú three words in Bantu y dos en celta latino and two in Celtic Latin. ... ... El pasado allá fue bantú. The past over there was Bantu. El futuro es de ébano macizo, The future is of solid ebony, como la selva con su esperanza. like the jungle with its hope. El presente es sin nombres, The present is without names, ni moldes idénticos. or identical forms. En medio estamos, We are in the middle insoportablemente presentes: intolerably present el orgullo, el honor pride, honour y Dios and God HISPANIA, HISPANIA Somos irremediablemente We are inevitably las sendas del destino, the paths of destiny, híbridos con pasión y nostalgia… hybrids with passion and nostalgia… Mestizos de corazón… A mixed race at heart… Porque el hombre no es color, Because man is not colour, sino alma y corazón. but heart and soul Y esos corazones que fallecen And those hearts that perish en latidos de sangre y amor beating in blood and love 199

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National Identity in the Poetry of Equatorial Guinea

Se han juntado sin querer, queriendo,

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en el puchero ancestral ibero-bantú.

Joanna Boampong

have gathered unintentionally, willingly in the Ibero-Bantu ancestral matrix.

“Hispania” seems to synthesize the revolt, the quest and the vision that the poetry of Equatorial Guinea makes evident, in attempting to ‘articulate’, ‘figure out’, ‘construct’ and ‘configure’ national identity. Put together, the very first word of the poem (“Somos”) and the last (“ibero-bantu”) form a declaration, the finality of which dovetails and underscores the terms “híbridos” and “mestizos”. This goes directly against what the authorities perceive Equatoguineans to be. Therefore it is logical that the poet sees himself and his country to be in an indeterminate state—“En medio estamos.” As Marvin Lewis rightly observes: “From the ‘ibero-bantu’ cultural matrix a society has emerged that is in a constant state of biological and cultural transformation” (2007: 23). The poet’s vision of hope for the future resonates in the tone of the poem which, although serious, is not melancholic. He sees himself and his compatriots—and by extension, literature or poetry—as a means by which the country’s destiny will be forged. And this seems to be a responsibility he appears to have readily accepted and is prepared to assume. For him, ultimately, colour (or race) is not what constitutes man, but rather heart and soul. These are basic elements of humanity which seem to be a recurring theme in the poetry we have studied here. In conclusion, it is safe to say that the poetry of Equatorial Guinea brings up a fundamental issue to consider when confronting questions of national identity; and this is effectively captured by Stuart Hall when he affirms: . . . identity is not a fixed essence at all, lying unchanged outside history and culture. It is not some universal and transcendental spirit inside us on which history has made no fundamental mark. It is not once-andfor-all. It is not a fixed origin to which we can make some final and absolute Return. . . . Not an essence but a positioning. Hence there is always a politics of identity (1994: 395).

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Indeed the poetry studied here, while rejecting constructions of national identity based on static notions and elements and pointing out the dynamism that must be accounted for in the process, underscore the pre-eminence of the basic values of freedom, liberty, love, peace, and humanity.

References Balboa Boneke, Juan. 1987. Sueños en mi selva: antología poética. Malabo: Centro Cultural Hispano-Guineano. Bokesa Napo, Ciriaco. 1969. Isla Verde. La Guinea Ecuatorial. Junio-agosto: 167168. Hall, Stuart. 1994. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Williams Patrick and Laura Chrisman (Eds.) New York: Columbia U. Press, pp. 392-403. Lewis, Marvin. 2007. An Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea: Between Colonialism and Dictatorship. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press. Mijero, Juan Chema. 1964. León de África. In Literatura de la Guinea Ecuatorial: Antología. 2000. Donato Ndongo and Mbaré Ngom (Eds.) Madrid: Sial, p. 61. Ndongo, Donato. 2001. Panorama de la literatura guineana. África hacia el siglo XXI. José Ramón Trujillo (Ed.) Madrid: Sial Ediciones, pp. 513-526.

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Ndongo, Donato and Mbaré Ngom. 2000. Literatura de la Guinea Ecuatorial: Antología. Madrid: Sial, pp. 73–74. Ocha’a Mve Bengobesama, Constantino. 1985. Semblanzas de la Hispanidad. Madrid: Anzos. Oló Mibuy, Anacleto. Hispania. Donato Ndongo and Mbaré Ngom. 2000. Literatura de la Guinea Ecuatorial: Antología. Madrid: Sial, p. 226. Soyinka, Wole. 1969. The Writer in a Modern African State. In The Writer in Modern Africa. Per Wästberg (Ed.) New York: Africana, pp. 14-21.

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Gender Issues in Ousmane Sembène and Ama Ata Aidoo

Anne V. Adams

Gender Issues in Ousmane Sembène and Ama Ata Aidoo ‘No Sweetness Here’ for ‘Our Sister’, ‘La Noire’? Gender Empowerment in the Short Stories of Sembène Ousmane and Ama Ata Aidoo Anne V. Adams

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The author illuminates common themes in the short stories of the famed Senegalese cinematic artist and writer Sembène Ousmane, and Ghanaian playwright and novelist Ama Ata Aidoo. Both writers depict gender issues as one of several assaults upon dignity and agency that individuals face in contemporary Africa. Although Sembène became known principally for his widely celebrated critiques of political struggle and cultural traditions, Adams argues that his treatment of gender is a central component of his wide-sweeping radicalism. Correlatively, Adams challenges the simplistic convention of allocating Aidoo to the category of African feminist writers.

Arguably the first published African creative writer (in European languages) to radically engage in gender politics is the recently departed, sorely missed Sembène Ousmane (1923-2007). From his early writings, which include the short story collection Voltaïque (Tribal Scars, hereafter TS) 1962, and in all of his best-known fiction, e.g. Les Bouts de bois de Dieu (God’s Bits of Wood, hereafter GBW) 1960; from his first featurelength film La noire de . . . (Black Girl) to his very last, award-winning Moolade, Sembène was an internationally respected artist/articulator (‘artisticulator’) of gender politics, in the African context, from the beginning of his career to the end. But gender politics would attract recognition in African literature first with the work of women writers, beginning in the 1970s. Subsequently, for African literature, especially in English, the standard-bearer for literary gender politics is undisputedly Ama Ata Aidoo. Perhaps because her 202

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Gender Issues in Ousmane Sembène and Ama Ata Aidoo

Anne V. Adams

central characters are mostly females, the labelling of Feminism has, unfortunately, become a simplistic way of identifying her. When we are reading the plays Dilemma of a Ghost or Anowa, the stories of No Sweetness Here [hereafter NSH], The Girl Who Can and Other Stories [GWC], the poems in Someone Talking to Somewhere [TS], or An Angry Letter in Autumn, or the novels Our Sister Killjoy and Changes—because of their primarily female outspoken, ‘outrageous’, mould-breaking protagonists—Aidoo has been simplistically relegated to the Feminist category. In contrast, despite his obvious literary offensive against gender inequality, Sembène has never been cited chiefly as a writer or filmmaker of gender politics. Rather, he is identified as the griot of Senegalese literary and cinematic arts, a virulent critic of colonialism, especially postcolonialism, and as a commentator upon some entrenched attitudes and behavioural norms representative of traditional Senegalese culture. Regarding this last feature, critic Edris Makward (1999: 75) articulates Sembène’s concerns demonstrated in his works in the following way: “The . . . constant concern for an open world where there is consideration, respect and equality for all people, regardless of race, ethnic origin or gender is . . . a central theme in his work from the very beginning.” Seen in the context of traditional Senegalese society—as well as in other traditional African societies, with hierarchies of caste, class, ethnicity, religious charlatanism, gender—Sembène’s artistic politics were fairly radical. In fact, as Makward’s statement indicates, Sembène’s politics of gender were only one plank of his wide-sweeping radicalism. As with Sembène, Ama Ata Aidoo’s literary politics also embraced gender politics without being exclusively defined by it. For this Ghanaian writer, as for the Senegalese artist, hierarchies of socio-economic class, often resulting from differentials in level of Western education, ethnicity or regional origin, religious charlatanism, as well as specific gender issues, all combine to make up a wide-sweeping literary radicalism. Among Ghanaian writers, Aidoo (along with Ayi Kwei Armah) would merit the very same assessment as Makward made of Sembène: a virulent critic of colonialism, and especially of post-colonialism, and of certain entrenched attitudes and traditional norms of Ghanaian culture. In Aidoo’s works such contested issues from all spheres of society 203

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are imbricated and of equivalent valence; for her, gender is but one of several roots of conflict. Vincent Odamtten’s (1994: 80) thorough analysis of Aidoo’s oeuvre makes reference to the Introduction to the second (American) edition of No Sweetness Here by the South African writer Ezekiel Mpahlele. We must remember that in 1970, a US publication of an African woman’s work would certainly have needed an affirming introduction by a recognised, i.e. male, ‘patron’. (In this case, Aidoo’s book would have been better off if it had risked forging its own identity without the blessing of the paternalistic/patronising introduction.) True to his role, Mpahlele deals a truly sexist blow in his Introduction by characterising the thrust of the book as “the woman . . . without worrying about her traditional [unassertive] place . . . assert[ing] . . . her motherhood.” Fortunately, Odamtten catches this reductionist, inaccurate and therefore useless characterisation. Odamtten (1994: 80) says “Aidoo’s stories do not simply, as Mpahlele wrote, ‘depict the conditions and quality of life of traditional and modern African womanhood . . . [nor simply] offer a solution to the dilemma of the modern urban African woman’.” As the characteristics of No Sweetness Here, Odamtten (1994: 81) cites “the richness and insight afforded by Aidoo’s artistic genius and complex vision of the world.” He quotes her from an interview: Whatever gender, whatever nationality we belong to, we must also resist any attempts at being persuaded to think that the woman question has to be superseded by the struggle against any local exploitative system, the nationalist struggle, or the struggle against imperialism and global monopoly capital. For what is becoming clear is that in the long run, none of these fronts is either of greater relevance than the rest or even separate from them (Odamtten 1994: 81).

Thus, for both Aidoo and Sembène it is the power relations undergirding social and economic inequality—material, physical, psychological, spiritual—that are their contextual basis. For both writers, gender is only one of these societal fronts on which these power relations are contested. A critical quality of the short story genre is its success in honing in on an issue, by means of dramatic action or dialogue. For the purposes of the present discussion the short story genre thus permits a fruitful 204

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assessment of the similar literary approaches by Sembène and Aidoo to the social and political issues that claim their attention. Sembène’s Voltaïque (1962) and Aidoo’s two volumes, No Sweetness Here (1969) and The Girl Who Can and Other Stories (1997, 2002)1 provide the inventory for our analysis. By drawing out broad thematic categories from the societal issues of concern in the short stories of these two writers, we can posit several that are basic to the works of both. Among topics that are not necessarily gender-specific (though often with gender-specific consequences) we can posit the following: Challenges of post-colonial society—in which expectations, perspectives and behaviours resulting from the colonised experience challenge the inherited ways: Sembène’s “In the Face of History,” “A Matter of Conscience”; Aidoo’s “For Whom Things Did Not Change;” “Certain Winds from the South,” “In the Cutting of a Drink” [NSH2] and “Newly Opened Doors” [GWC3]. Conflicts arising from class differences—determined by economic, educational, political or culturally conferred status: Sembène’s “A Matter of Conscience”; Aidoo’s “The Message” [NSH], “Payments” [GWC]. Religious charlatanism and abuse of religious authority—which, even though it is an aspect of culturally conferred status, receives focused treatment by Sembène and Aidoo (Sembène’s “The False Prophet”; Aidoo’s “A Gift from Somewhere”). Living with/in the ‘metropole’—the alienating experiences of the colonial or former colonial sojourning in the ‘metropole’, whether the specific colonising nation—France, with Sembène (“Chaiba, the Algerian;” “Black Girl,” “Letters from France”, or a postcolonial substitute) and USA, with Aidoo (“Other Versions,” [NSH]; “Nowhere Cool,” “Nutty” [GWC]). 1

Aidoo’s prize-winning edited volume African Love Stories (Oxford: Ayebia Publishing Ltd., 2006) is not included in this paper, because the stories are those of other writers.

2

NSH: abbreviation used throughout this paper for No Sweetness Here.

3

GWC: abbreviation used throughout this paper for The Girl Who Can.

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1. Gender struggle as a universal Beyond those relatively universal issues common to the short-story collections of Sembène and Aidoo, we move now to the focus of this analysis, their treatment of gender within the broader contexts of universal issues. Here again, we can identify under two broad headings recurrent themes emphasised in both writers’ stories “Marriage and Parenthood,” and “Social, Cultural, Economic Self-Empowerment:” Marriage and parenthood • Critique of the marriage contract, with attention to abusive husbands and victimised wives, child custody in divorce, the economies/ecologies of marriage; • The ‘joys’ of motherhood (in the ironic sense, as in Buchi Emecheta’s novel of the same title) depicting the particular challenges of motherhood resulting from those factors considered within their critiques of the marriage contract, such as those listed above. Social, cultural, economic self-empowerment • Narrower life choices offered to, or available to a woman than those available to a man, resulting from societal expectations or limitations on appropriate roles for women, preferences given to male children, or from the competing exigencies imposed by marriage and/or motherhood • Self-empowerment of women, in the forms of rejection of victim status, challenges to outdated or irrational gender limitations, revising the terms for self-actualization; all of these being especially attributed to the independent girl-child • ‘Sisterhood’: Solidarity within the community of women Illustrations from the writers’ collections will substantiate associating their works in accord with these themes. Critique of the marriage contract. In their critiques of the marriage contract, both Sembène and Aidoo present instances of husbands’ abuse and exploitation of their wives, mental or physical, primarily because it is simply a prerogative rationalised as a means of asserting their culturally ascribed power to keep wives under control. Both writers show that this power is acknowledged in the society by both women as well as men. For 206

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example, Sembène’s story “Her Three Days” presents a psychologically abused wife who retaliates in ways that publicly embarrass the husband who casually ignores the conjugal visit rule of three-day rotation, until the evening of the third day. This is a polygamous wife who refuses the psychological and emotional abuse, with attendant physical consequences, accepted in the doctrine “It’s a woman’s lot! We have to be patient. Men are our masters under God.” However, in making an instinctive face-saving defence to other women in the compound on the matter of her delinquent husband’s delay, Noumbe is aware that “it was rather her own self-worth she was defending” [TS 45]. In “The Bilal’s Fourth Wife,” physical abuse of his wives by the widely respected bilal Suliman, is rationalised by both men and women. “People [the men] said to them [wives]: ‘. . . You must have done something for him to beat you.’” The co-wives console the one who is beaten: ‘It’s a woman’s lot! We have to be patient. Men are our masters under God.” Aidoo’s long-suffering Maami Ama, of “No Sweeetness Here,” also had learned from her mother that “in marriage, a woman must sometimes be a fool” [NSH 75]. She makes the difficult (but liberating) decision finally to divorce her husband, “a selfish and bullying man,” after seven years of bearing “ill-usage from [him] coupled with contempt and insults from his wives,” and no sympathy from his mother and sisters. And, the ultimate blow is the husband’s family insistence on custody of the bright, beautiful, universally adored adolescent son in the divorce case. The classic case of the mental abuse of marital infidelity is one theme in “Two Sisters.” Here the reasoning of the faithful proper Christian wife, currently pregnant with their second child, who still loves her unfaithful husband and is not interested in any other man, because “it’s how the good God created [her]” [NSH 111].

2. Economies / ecologies of marriage With this (clumsily worded) category I refer to the deployment of resources, both human and material (economies) in the marriage, and to each partner’s relative role in pursuing the maximum mutual good within that domestic environment (ecologies). Depicting the marriage 207

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contract as a form of ‘marriage commerce’, through the father’s choice of the ‘highest bidder’ as a husband for his daughter, Sembène mounts the dramatically shocking climax in the romantic story “Love in Shady Lane.” The sweet saga of a simple pair of young lovers in an idyllic neighbourhood is destroyed by the unctuous invasion of the fancy cars and gifts of a ‘big man’ who begins visiting the girl’s father. Sembène gives more details of the financial challenges of wives in the polygamous marriage, just around the observance of the prescribed conjugal visits, in the aforementioned story “Her Three Days” [in TS]. The feeling of always having to ‘win’ Mustapha’s attention for her allotted three days compels Noumbe to deprive her children (the son, anyway) of potentially leftover meat, because the father doesn’t ever come to eat his own portion that Noumbe reserves for him; to dilute with wood-ash the medicine she takes for a heart condition rather than to buy more in order to spend the money on things he likes to eat; “indeed, hadn’t she got herself into debt so that he would be more comfortable and have better meals at her place [than at her co-wives’]?” [TS 45]. Sembène’s metaphorical use of the economic expression of Noumbe’s view of the agony of waiting as “the price she had to pay for Mustapha’s presence” [TS 41] functions also as an articulation of the ecology of their relationship i.e. she anticipates, prepares, waits, and suffers emotionally and physically, while he disregards any and all obligation to give her the appropriate attention. Through its critique of a father’s traditionally “sacred right to have possession of his offspring” in cases of divorce, and the question of equal rights to sexual fulfilment, “The Bilal’s Fourth Wife” is a brilliant example of the confluence of the ‘economies’ and the ‘ecologies’ of marriage. The lecherous holy man Suliman takes a young fourth wife, Yacine, . . . not like the other girls . . . And what a tongue she had! . . . a tomboy, a hard worker and joined in the young men’s games and competitions, challenging them.. To her question “But how do you expect me to get on with that old man?” her father answered: “That old man? He’s giving you what the young ones haven’t got. Honour, rank, esteem—to say nothing of two bulls on your wedding day! Even your mother didn’t have that” [TS 11].

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However, after a short time and siring one baby, the aged Suliman’s sexual performance proves woefully inadequate for the young wife; and Yacine not only takes a younger lover and bears his child, but, out of total absence of any benefit from the marriage, she eventually leaves the old man, to return to her parents’ home. Obviously, for this wife, the economic benefits from the marriage, of “honour, rank, esteem,” and “two bulls”—which, of course accrued to her family rather than to herself—were not sufficient to make up for the ecological deficits of physical, social and psychological fulfilment. Ultimately, when divorce is considered both the economic and the ecological factors play a role: Although Suliman would like to divorce Yacine for leaving him, he hesitates, reluctant to lose the dowry from her family. Yacine, on the other hand, knows that if she pursued a divorce on grounds that “he [wasn’t] a man anymore,” or as she states it in the divorce proceedings: “He was my husband, but later he was no longer capable of being my husband,” she would have to give back everything her husband had given her. Of greater importance, though, is custody of her second child, whose father’s identity is public knowledge in the community. Exploiting this fact, the young wife makes her case with the logic of taking a lover upon the husband’s failure to execute his duty. She wins custody over that child in the divorce (making the case also for the salience of maternity over paternity). In “Letters from France,” yet another instance of Sembène’s depiction of marriage between an old man and a young woman, we see again an ecologically unviable relationship which saps the vitality of the wife, who writes home to her best friend: Do you remember how lively I was, overflowing with vitality? Everyone used to talk of my exuberance. Well, now I’m all shrivelled up, like a slice of meat left in the sun. To be sure I used to live in a hovel in a shanty-town. But there was an abundance of sunshine and much laughter; there were shared pleasures and hopes. Here there’s nothing. Nothing, I tell you. Sometimes in my thoughts I can see the lesions hollowed out by the bloody weepings of my heart. And then I ask questions [TS 56].

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As if this situation were not hard enough to bear, when she does become pregnant the old man immediately capitalises on the situation by pushing her to grovel before the employment officer to hire him because of the child on the way. For marital economies/ecologies among Aidoo’s stories, the following four provide particularly good examples: From No Sweetness Here “Certain Winds from the South,” and from The Girl Who Can . . . “Payments,” “Nowhere Cool,” and “Comparisons.” This last-mentioned story presents a carefully woven diachronic tableau of economic development over the course of two generations of the narrator’s family, overlaid with a synchronic analysis of the partners’ participation in the family’s management. Through the narration of the present-time experience, interspersed with childhood recollections of her parents in the corresponding situation, we see two generations of a family: the contemporary generation and that of the narrator’s parents. For the narrator and for her parents’ generation we see a typical workday morning for mother, father, and children, from wake-up time, through morning baths and dressing, breakfast, final preparations and departure for work and school. The routine of the older-generation parents is captured in the image of the father, having been fed his breakfast, now impatiently waiting, cutlass in hand, for the mother to send the older children off to school, then prepare her head-load with the noon meal, and tie the baby on her back, before the couple can set out to the farm. The routine of the contemporary-generation parents is captured in the image of the father, having eaten his breakfast by the TV news, and having reminded the wife to lay out his clothes for the day, now sits in the car impatient, waiting while the wife hurries the kids into the car before she herself can join them all for the family’s departure. Aidoo’s intergenerational story “Comparisons” shows that the ecology of marriage, i.e. the relative roles played by each partner, has remained static over the course of the two generations despite the economic progress symbolised by a modern house with indoor bathroom, a family car, and starkly higher income. The wife’s narration of her family’s typical morning is interspersed with her ironic acknowledgment of the qualitative similarities between her own married life and her mother’s, in spite of the major quantitative (material) differences in their lifestyles. 210

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Three of Aidoo’s stories present different versions of the same theme of the impact of external factors on the economies/ecologies in a marriage. In “Certain Winds from the South” [NSH] social, geographic, and economic factors in newly independent Ghana, determine the young husband Issa’s decision to leave his wife, his infant son, and mother-inlaw to seek long-term work in a far-off part of the country. In this move the husband/father is prioritising economic benefits for his family over the social benefits of his presence for raising his child and contributing to his family in other ways. Further, the cultural compromise of going afar to seek a job which at home would be regarded as virtually degrading exacerbates the toll that his decision places on his family. Similarly the psychological burden on a husband, particularly, for whom employment opportunities have dried up, particularly in the disillusionment following unfulfilled expectations from the country’s Independence. A variation on the same theme reverses the genders and advances the situation forward at least one generation, in “Nowhere Cool.” Nevertheless, it is still a case of a partner who makes the agonising decision to leave the family to travel far away for a long period, in order to eventually earn better for the family. Here we are made privy to the ambivalence and anxieties of an educated wife/mother who, by accepting a fellowship to pursue a PhD at a prestigious university in the US, must leave her husband and children as well—including an infant—for two or possibly three years. While in “Certain Winds from the South” we see the husband/father agonizing over the decision to migrate, and in “Nowhere Cool” we see the wife/mother’s grappling with her dilemma, “Payments” voices a wife’s empathy with her carpenter-husband’s psychological, as well as economic, hardship resulting from the loss of his job at Akosombo. Venting to her friend, the narrator-wife says: A man of muscle who has learnt his own trade cannot help feeling irritated when he cannot support himself. No, he has not been sitting idle. How can you ask me that Ekuwa, when you have been to my house several times and found him shaving wood or doing something like that? Now can anyone tell me how much a carpenter earns who lives among fishermen who themselves have got only leaky boats and broken nets? What new houses do they build? What spaces do they

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have that a carpenter can furnish? No, the people among whom we live have no jobs for Tawia Mensa to do. When someone dies, they order a coffin: and that of the cheapest kind. So that, after he has taken out the cost of the wood, what is left is just about what covers the nails and the varnish [GWC 107-8].

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3. Parenthood The two writers present parenthood from different angles, but with equivalent weight. Parenthood for a father means social and economic status; for mother it means psychological and social fulfilment. We have already alluded to the virtually exclusive role played by the mother in caring for children, in, e.g. Aidoo’s “Comparisons,” wherein two generations of morning rituals present the mother’s duty to get the children up and out, while the father waits impatiently for his wife to finish those tasks so that all can leave the house together. By contrast, in “Her Three Days” Sembène describes fathers’ activity, on a Sunday at least, as: “they nosed about in one room and another, some of them cradling their youngest in their arms, others playing with the older children … while the women busied themselves with the housework.” [TS 48-49]. In general, one can take from Sembène and Aidoo’s representations of perspective and execution featuring in each of the parental roles (which differ again according to the sex of the child) as being a form of social and material status with attendant economic responsibilities for a father, in contrast with the social and psychological fulfilment, with attendant economic, social, and physical responsibilities for mothers. We have seen already in Sembène’s “The Bilal’s Fourth Wife” the social importance of the children to the husband, in the divorce, in Suliman’s attempt to gain custody of Yacine’s second child, under the “sacred right to have possession of his offspring.” We have also seen in “Letters from France,” the husband’s financial exploitation of the wife’s pregnancy to get himself a job. But Sembène’s story “The Mother” attributes to motherhood the status of the universal foundation for ethical behaviour of all men toward all women. The story presents a mother who faces up to a tyrannical king by invoking the sanctity of his mother, and shames all the men in the kingdom who have cowered before him into 212

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finally taking the courage to oppose him, in the name of their mothers. The author makes the point that, by virtue of (i) the biological fact of physical anguish of women in giving birth, and (ii) the sociological fact of society’s allocating/allowing the cares of child-rearing to reside with the mother—every human being enters life through the same means, i.e. as equals. And regardless of the superior status that ‘Nature’ accords to men over women, men are nevertheless obligated to respect women. An aged mother succeeds in convincing the otherwise cowering men to revolt against the king, who appropriates to himself carnal rights to any female in the kingdom.

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Sire, by the look of you, anyone would think that you have no mother. From the day you were born until now, you have contended only with women, because they are weak. The pleasure you derive from it is more vile than the act itself. I’m not angry with you for behaving in that way. Because you are a man and because a woman is always a woman, and so Nature wills it. I’m not angry with you for you do have a mother, and through mothers I respect every human being. Son of a king or of a slave, the mother bears a child with love, gives birth in pain, and cherishes this rending of herself in the utmost depths of her senses. In her name I forgive you. Hold women in respect, not for their white hairs but for the sake of your own mother in the first place and then for womanhood itself [TS 36].

So, through the voice of the outraged elderly mother, who has watched the men stand by while the king helps himself to their sisters and wives, Sembène makes the often-touted African ‘reverence for motherhood’ the context for a critique of the sexual liberties/entitlements that African societies tolerate African men to allow themselves. Aidoo’s two stories “A Gift from Somewhere” [GfS] and “The Message” [NSH] present the centrality of being a mother, particularly of a son, in the psyche of the traditional African woman. Especially in the situation of high infant mortality, the panic of keeping a baby son alive by any means necessary drives a mother to desperate dealings with a charlatan imam [GfS]. Or, the struggle to gain custody of the bright, beautiful, universally adored adolescent son from the divorced husband, ends with the ultimate, ironic pain of the child’s accidental death [NSH]. 213

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In both of these stories the social and psychological importance of motherhood is enhanced when the child is male. In “The Message” we see the maternal anguish over the feared death of a pregnant granddaughter in labour and of the anticipated great-grandchild, which puts the rural grandmother through an experience of social degradation at the urban hospital. Referring to her granddaughter as her last remaining “water pot,” which she fears is “broken,” Nana Amfoa wails, “I have buried all my children and now I am going to bury my only grandchild!” [NSH 52]. The burdens and anguish of motherhood are Aidoo’s themes in these stories. Following upon the discussion of the gendered positions and execution of power in domestic relationships as presented by Sembène and Aidoo, the remainder of this paper will focus entirely on Sembène’s and Aidoo’s short story renderings of the agency of women specifically in their own empowerment.

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4. Self-empowerment through life choices We have already seen Sembène’s example of the self-aware young wife Yacine who exercises a choice by openly taking a young lover, and defending in court her right to do so. Sembène’s story “Black Girl” also presents a picture of a young woman’s choice, which, though tragic, constitutes a form of agency. One of Sembène’s best known short stories, and the basis for his eponymous first film “Black Girl,” ends in the choice of suicide by the young Senegalese housemaid in Marseilles, who had accompanied her French employer’s family from Dakar with high expectations of life in France. Finding herself in a situation of virtual slavery, however, Diouana makes several attempts to assert her dignity within the constraints of her situation. She finally takes her life rather than continue it in those circumstances. Also, we have seen Aidoo’s academic wife who “had left her children way over there on the other side of the Atlantic to come and study for two years or more. Wh-a-a-at?” [“Nowhere Cool” GWC 143]. Further, Aidoo’s “Two Sisters” offers a dialogue on the relative virtues of a faithful wife with an unfaithful husband as opposed to the status of girlfriend to the ‘big man’, as chosen by the faithful wife’s moderately educated younger sister, representing legions of young urban women. 214

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But the story “In the Cutting of a Drink” takes the urban experience out of the marriage environment and explores one of the social issues generated by a network of factors, social and economic. “Any kind of work is work,” is the rationalisation of the choice of prostitution as an occupation into which many young women in the cities are driven. In fact, the story of the teenager Mansa who has left the rural school to seek a better life in the city, differs from that of the younger sister in “Two Sisters” only by an O-level’s degree. For these girls’ respective pursuits of the material fruits of urban glamour throw them directly into sexual servitude under the power of men. Nevertheless, the strength of these two Aidoo stories lies in the discussion of this way of life as a self-determining, conscious choice—albeit an ultimately disempowering choice. The story “Newly Opened Doors” (whose title is amusingly ambiguous) brings up once again the economics accompanying the political development of the country. “. . . that’s what the politician who represented our district [during] those first days of Independence said we were going to get. Our lives were going to be full of them: newly opened doors, ‘now that the whites are leaving’.” [GWC 129]

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The narrator, who had worked as a maid, doggedly—and successfully—pursues a government custodial job in the hopes that the changes brought by Independence will enable her to do better for herself. “For the past fifteen years . . . I was looking for a proper job. I mean a job working in an office. For the government or maybe some private company . . . but in an office. Because in these households, you never grow up . . . At least, in an office, you can get promotion to something like Senior Cleaner. And sometimes, I hear there can even be a pension” [GWC 134].

The limits of the narrator’s job possibilities, having worked only as a maid, are underscored by her self-aware recognition of her permanent status as ‘girl’ in the colonial social system which had employed her. Still another story of the pursuit of choices as a source of empowerment is “Choosing.” Reminiscent of a theme in Aidoo’s novel Changes, this story emphasises the importance of freedom to make choices that may not work in the end. The freedom to take risks, to make mistakes, and, above all to follow one’s inclinations, is the basis of the experience of 215

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Gender Issues in Ousmane Sembène and Ama Ata Aidoo

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the ‘Writer-Turned-Teacher-Turned-Trader’, who chooses each of those occupations in turn, only to give up each one in turn. However, as the mother reminds her frustrated daughter, “It is true that you still don’t have the money to solve your problems and you still haven’t written your book. But that does not mean that you are where you were. Indeed, you are very far ahead. You have learnt something about yourself and the world, no?” [GWC 24]. The lessons learned from venturing out and seeking one’s fortune with all the attendant dead-ends, dangers, and failures is not new in literature—indeed it is the stuff of the bildungsroman and the picaresque novel. But what is new in this Aidoo story “Choosing,” as well as, I believe, in Changes, is its application to an African woman protagonist. That an African woman is given the space figuratively to ‘fall down and scrape her knee’, is a novel idea. And, the strength in Aidoo’s presentation is that the whole sequence of experiences is set within a familiar cultural context. The most poignant examples of self-empowering agency presented in the short story collections of Sembène and Aidoo take the form of independent action which rejects victim status, resists limiting standards, or challenges abusive practices. Although similar to the theme of ‘life choices’, where the women choose within the parameters of their real lives, the phenomenon of resistance to the oppressive status quo, or refusing victim status, or, in more positive terms, an independent spirit takes the characters beyond those parameters. Aidoo’s women are matter-of-factly pursuing self-determination, self-definition, self-(re) construction. Sembène’s Yacine (“Bilal’s . . .”) clearly embodies all of these characteristics, and brings her community to take a new perspective on longheld views of rights and obligations in marriage. The mentally abused Noumbe, of “Her Three Days” ultimately finds a way to strike back at her negligent husband and make him feel her resentment, by mocking him in front of his friends who accompany him when he finally drops in on the evening of her third day. Not only does she speak to him with sarcastic reverence, but she also takes violent action, smashing the three plates sitting on the table awaiting his visit. From Sembène’s other stories Diouana’s suicide in “Black Girl” is an instance of the refusal of 216

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Anne V. Adams

victim status, while the verbal attack of “The Mother” on the king is both a daring revolt on her part and the spark for a revolt by the men against a long-tolerated abusive practice. We have seen also that Aidoo’s long-suffering Maami Ama finally reaches a point where she refuses to continue to be victimized by her husband and his family, even though her action in initiating the divorce brings with it the risk of forfeiting the central element in her life, her only child. “In a salute to . . . the three women who first dared to join the Ghana Air Force,” Ama Aidoo has written “Heavy Moments” [GWC], describing the trials and tribulations and ultimately the vindication of those pioneering women who resisted limiting standards in order to pursue their dreams. The limiting of standards for girls as maintained by sustaining different sets of aspiration and opportunity for daughters and for sons—and in this case unchanged over the course of two generations—is the theme of “Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral” [NSH]. The deceased, the smart, enterprising, indomitable Auntie Araba, had, as a youth, seen her opportunities for achievement in the gourmet catering business stifled by a teenage pregnancy, for which the responsible man, in whose household she worked, expelled her with neither acknowledgment nor support. After raising her son to college age through her own hard work as a baker, she is gratified that the father eventually acknowledges the boy and pays for a fancy education. However, when this boy, now a preening ‘scholar’, impregnates Mansa, one of the brightest, most promising girls in the town, Auntie Araba takes her in as her daughter-in-law, establishing a mothering-mentoring relationship, imbuing Mansa with all of Auntie Araba’s own skills and, above all, her strength of character. Waiting for the boy to finish his education and properly marry Mansa, they learn that he has impregnated a schoolmate, whose “mother is a big lady and her father is a big man. They said if he did not marry their daughter, they would finish him. . . .” [NSH 153]. Mansa, devastated, leaves her baby with her mother and moves to the big city. However, contrary to the assumptions of the community, she does not turn to prostitution but finds work in a big modern bakery, where “[t]hey bake hundreds of loaves of bread an hour with machines” [NSH 154]. Thus, 217

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Mansa proves to be a true ‘daughter’ of the indomitable Auntie Araba, making the best of her situation, capitalising on her strengths. “She really is like auntie herself. She has all of her characteristics. She too is a good woman” [NSH 154]. Aidoo, in this story, militantly removes the women from their victim status by arming them with the inner fortitude to extricate themselves, albeit not to the level that could have otherwise been attained. While the gendered inequities in the social system are clearly drawn—unchanged over two generations!—the ‘stuff’ from which these two women are made proves that “a good person does not rot” [NSH 154]. Without question, making a move to strike back at the symbol of the inequities in the socio-economic system is one of the most powerful/empowering forms of resistance. In “Payments” the striking back provides admittedly only psychological, temporary empowerment for the fishmonger-narrator, but it undoubtedly leaves a lasting impression on the recipient of the ‘blow’. Narrating the whole story to her sister fishmongers, she expresses (with characteristic Aidoo mischievousness) her only regret about having spat in the face of an arrogant, arriviste potential customer:

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Yes, I am glad. Even though I know my life is not going to change for the better now just because I spat into the eyes of a whore. What pains me a little is that I had chewed a stick at all in the morning. Because for her type, the best is to splash them all over with something from a mouth that is stale from a whole night’s sleeping. But who knows, there may be a next time yet.

We learn from her narrative that, for one thing, the customer is the wife of one of the despised post-Independence corruption profiteers. On a more personal plane, though, the object of her hatred had, in the past, as a nurse in a paediatric ward, treated the narrator very callously and condescendingly, when her baby was a patient. So, the spitting in the customer’s face, rather than selling her any fish, is a strike at the disillusioning post-Independence corruption, the arrogance and condescension of the middle class toward the lower classes, with special attention to the treatment by hospital nurses of lower-class clients. (This theme has already appeared in “The Message,” from NSH.) So, the opportunity for aggressive retaliation, even though short-lived, is nevertheless 218

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Anne V. Adams

sweet, especially for the fishmonger who recognises that the social and economic inequities that she catalogues are simply a fact of their lives, with no likelihood for redress. So, her spitting is a memorable strike in the direction of redressing those inequities.

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5. Self-empowerment through resistance For both Aidoo and Sembène the feisty, independent, non-conforming woman was once a feisty, independent, non-conforming girl-child. The refusal to accept conformist delineations of normative behaviour or spheres of activity is a central theme in every one of Aidoo’s stories that features girls. The title, “She-Who-Would-Be-King” appropriately suggests a child who ignores the normal parameters of aspirations for a girl, breaking barriers where necessary. The protagonist of this futuristic tale, spanning the half-century between the mid-1970s and the 2020s—the protagonist (“whose story this should have been” [GWC 56]) declares when she is ten years old that she wants to be president of her country. Responding to the expected reaction, “I don’t think the men of this country will ever let a woman be their President,” she retorts, “No? We shall see” [GWC 55]. Aidoo takes the opportunity of this futuristic mode to rehearse every imaginable crisis for the continent in the time-span covered: “Man-made but accidental, man-made and deliberate, home-grown, imported, natural . . . Name it. If it was a calamity, Africa suffered it” [GWC 58]. Those calamities included the AIDS epidemic, “The Drought,” the “Great Plot to wipe us off the surface of the earth,” and rains that caused all the major rivers—Nile, Niger, Congo, Zambezi—to overflow their banks. “[T]hose fifty [years] were something special” [GWC 58]. Now, in 2026 the ambitious little girl is Professor Adjoa Moji, Professor and Dean of the Law Faculty of the university in the capital city of what is now the Confederation of African States, which has replaced the individual countries. But she is not President. Rather it is her 36-year-old daughter who, on 25th May 2026, has been elected the First President of Africa. So, even though it took an additional generation to make the assertion come true, the bold, uninhibited attitude of Adjoa Moji obviously set the example and the stage for her daughter’s aspirations and achievements. With the symbol219

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Anne V. Adams

ism of the specific date of the election, 25th May4 in Pan-African history, Aidoo links the progressive political evolution toward a united Africa to the progressive social evolution of equality of opportunity accompanied by the eradication of gender-role barriers. In “The Late Bud” [NSH] it is Yaaba, who legitimately challenges the maxim that ‘The good child who willingly goes on errands eats the food of peace.’ We feel sorry for little Yaaba who—because of her preference for playing outside around the Big Trunk throwing pebbles rather than sitting by the hearth, hands folded quietly in her lap, waiting to be sent on errands—doesn’t earn the honorific of ‘good girl’ like her sisters. But, more troubling to her is that her mother, who refers to her other children as “my Adwoa,” “my Tawia,” calls Yaaba only by her name, with never any term of endearment. However, when Yaaba inadvertently causes a fire in the course of trying to prepare a surprise gift for her mother, a gift that touches the mother’s heart deeply, the mother and other adults in the household, and indeed the whole village, come to recognise the forms— legitimate though less customarily seen in girls—through which Yaaba’s good character manifests itself. Her gratification comes in hearing her mother call her “My Yaaba.” In this case the child unintentionally ‘lights a fire’ under the villagers, causing them to re-think their perspectives on gendered norms for behaviour and character in children. It is one thing for society to prescribe the behaviour that makes a ‘good girl’. But in the story from which the book takes its title, “The Girl Who Can,” the issue is a prescriptive physique for a girl. Contrary to what might be expected, it’s not about anything as socially constructed as beauty in a girl’s body. Rather little Adjoa’s grandmother criticises the child’s “spindly legs that are too long for a woman and too thin to be of any use” [GWC 30], as compared with more ideal “[l]egs that have meat on them with good calves to support solid hips . . . to be able to have children” [GWC 30]. When the child reaches the age for a decision to be made about sending her to school, the mother must push the argument for schooling to the grandmother, unconvinced of the utility of educating a girl whom the family should, rather, be grooming

4

May 25th is Africa Unity Day, established by the OAU.

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Anne V. Adams

for marriage and motherhood.5 Ultimately, the old lady, despairing of the child’s potential to carry out her biologically determined destiny, concedes the school issue with the resigned comment, “Ah, maybe with legs like hers, she might as well go to school” [GWC 31]. However, when the pupil Adjoa turns out to be the best all-around junior athlete, the grandmother comes to realise “[T]hin legs can also be useful . . . That ‘even though some legs don’t have much meat on them, to carry hips . . . they can run. Thin legs can run . . . then who knows?’ . . . ” [GWC 32-33]. Once again the girl-child’s own natural self, if permitted to develop outside the rigid social perceptions, expands the potential for herself and her society as well. And of course in the process, the case is made for girls’ education as an avenue for life options in addition to motherhood. Although Sembène’s anthology, Voltaïque (Tribal Scars [TS] 1962) doesn’t present any studies of children; he had already given us in the 1960 novel Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu (God’s Bits of Wood [GBW]) the unforgettably precocious daughter Adj’ibidj’i, who is in the middle of all the debate and action of the railroad workers’ strike. She is unquestionably a kindred sister to Aidoo’s Yaaba and Adjoa. But in the anthology’s title story “Tribal Scars,” a girl-child’s body becomes the canvas upon which is inscribed, literally and figuratively, Africans’ uncharted road toward self-determination, self-definition, self-(re)construction. Different in narrative mode from all the other ‘literary’ stories in the collection, “Tribal Scars” is told as a generations-old didactic tale from the oral tradition, explaining the origins of scarification practiced by some West African ethnic groups. Based in the underlying belief that the slave hunters used the captives’ skins for shoes, etc., the story describes the desperate action of a man, who, fleeing slave-hunters, and having previously killed his wife to prevent her from enslavement, scores the face and body of his beautiful ten-year-old daughter with knife marks, to insure that the slave-hunters will reject her. Sembène’s version of the origins of the widespread practice of scarification becomes a poetic representation of the desperate measures that Black people have historically taken—whether in slavery, 5

We note that it is not only males in the family who object to educating girls.

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colonialism, neo-colonialism, legal or customary segregation, apartheid, and all other forms of racial oppression. Hence, Sembène constructs the girl-child African as the field upon which Black people’s path is charted: through her youth, the girl-child symbolises the future; through her gender, she symbolises the least empowered and most subjugated group in human societies. In Aidoo’s words, is there ‘no sweetness here’ in Africa, nor abroad in the Western metropoles—for ‘our sister,’6 who is Sembène’s ‘la Noire,’ the Black Woman? If Sembène’s and Aidoo’s anthologies can be regarded as classics of the social consciousness in the short-story genre, do we conclude that the African female possesses no agency to effect positive change in her own life, at least to the same degree as do her African brothers? To begin with, in the collections of both writers we find, at the very least, apparently disempowered women conscious of their condition. Sembène’s Noumbe, of “Her Three Days,” is not only aware of the price she pays for her few days of pleasure in a polygamous marriage, but even muses: “Why shouldn’t it always be like that for every woman—to have a husband of one’s own?’ She wondered why not” [TS 41]. While upbraiding the king, the title character in “The Mother” in Sembène’s story can nevertheless demand respect for women, even though she accepts that women are by nature subjugated to men. Aidoo’s Maami Ama, of “No Sweetness Here” understands that “a wife must be a fool.” And the narrator of “Comparisons” recognises that, in spite of modern material trappings, her life is no better than her uneducated rural mother’s life. But beyond a consciousness of their situation, Aidoo unequivocally asserts the agency of women over their own lives, especially with her second volume of stories. It must be acknowledged, however, that some forms of such agency are already introduced in the first volume, in stories such as “Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral,” and “The Late Bud.”

6

From the title of Aidoo’s 1970 novel Our Sister Killjoy.

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Conclusion

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In the titles of Aidoo’s anthologies we observe a dramatic evolution in attitude between the first collection in 1969, and the second produced nearly thirty years later. In the first volume the tone is one of imposed self-sacrifice, or virtual powerlessness over the forces that control the woman’s life. The second volume offers a tone of assumed self-assertion and making way for herself and for others in the process. An analogous evolution in the titles of the stories within each volume yields a similar shift. From “Something to Talk about on the Way to the Funeral,” “A Gift from Somewhere” and “Certain Winds from the South” [NSH], to “Newly Opened Doors,” “Her Hair Politics,” “Choosing,” and “Payments” (connoting both “retaliation” and “vindication”), not to mention “She-Who-Would-Be-King” in The Girl Who Can. The evolution of tone is manifest not only in women’s own self-determination, but also in society’s determination of roles for women. Even though the central characters are women in nearly all the stories of the second volume, Aidoo’s abiding concerns about universals of social issues are reflected in the shared persistent challenges of postindependence, urbanized, educated, westernized, Ghanaian women and men, as, for example, in “Newly Opened Doors:” I still look after three or four generations … our mother and father, myself and my husband, my daughter and her children … The truth is, I don’t know any woman or man of our age here who is not living this impossible life. If they are well into their 50s, then they are looking after lots of people of different generations. If they are not, then they are dead, or by some chance, somebody else is looking after them [GWC 133-4].

The challenges shared by both genders also include some of the newer products of changes in Ghanaians’ (and Africans’) lives and lifestyles that occurred over the thirty years between the production of Aidoo’s first anthology and her second, particularly those popularly recognised transformations that occurred within the middle/professional class. For example both “About the Wedding Feast” and “Some Global News,” humorously raise issues from Africans’ sojourns in the West. 223

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Today, when we read Le Soleil in Dakar, The Daily Graphic in Accra, or perhaps The Daily Nation in Nairobi, we still find most of the social and political issues that are evoked in the short stories of Sembène and Aidoo. Topics on cultural models (i.e. what factors influence Africans’ self-consciousness, whether living at home or abroad), topics concerning social and economic class conflicts (e.g. as exemplified by the arrogantly disrespectful treatment of working class patients by nursing staff), or topics treating the corrupt power of ‘Big Men’ (including religious charlatans)—all these persist as features of twenty-first century African life, in slightly up-dated form—which Sembène and Aidoo were writing about half a century ago. Whether or not the problems presented in their short stories affect gender issues specifically, Sembène and Aidoo unequivocally advocate strategies of gender-mutual empowerment in a humanely enlightened Africa.

References Aidoo, Ama Ata. (1969) 1972. No Sweetness Here. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Aidoo, Ama Ata. 1970. Our Sister Killjoy. London: Longman. Aidoo, Ama Ata. 1997.The Girl Who Can and other stories. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers.

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Makward, Edris. 1999. Ousmane Sembène: Griot of modern times & advocate of a casteless African society. In Beyond Survival: African Literature and the search for new life. Kofi Anyidoho, Abena P.A. Busia and Anne V. Adams (Eds.) Trenton, New Jersey: Odamtten, Vincent. 1994. The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo: Polylectics and Reading against Neocolonialism (Gainesville: University of Florida Press) Totowa, New Jersey: Africa World Press, pp.75-84. Sembène, Ousmane. 1960. God’s Bits of Wood. London: Heinemann. Sembène, Ousmane. 1962. Voltaïque. Tribal Scars. English transl. Len Ortzen, 1974. London: Heinemann.

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National Consciousness in Russian Literature

Gamel Nasser Adam

National Consciousness in Russian Literature Constructing National Consciousness in Russian Literature: Some Lessons for the African Milieu

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Gamel Nasser Adam At a particular moment in Russian history, an independent national literature emerged, laying the foundations of a Russian national identity. But merely asserting Russia’s Russianness was not enough. Russia’s development was still impeded by an outmoded autocracy; and national progress demanded the reconfiguration of the national consciousness in the direction of socio-political liberation. Literature blazed the trail, contributing significantly to the major historical transformations which launched Russia on the road to becoming a major power. This paper argues that a historically parallel situation has emerged in Africa; but what parades as African literature is not authentic, as it is cast in the colonial linguistic tradition which is not neutral in the agenda of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation. Literature on the African continent is therefore further entrenching an inferiority complex, a distorted identity, and a false consciousness resulting in a deficiency in our understanding of the generating causes of the continent’s underdevelopment.

Introduction In the early seventeenth century the linguistic basis of the Russian literary language was established through the fusion of the contemporary popular vernacular and the imported and particularly ecclesiastical written language known as Church Slavonic. Significant though it was, this new linguistic creation still failed to provide the matrix for an authentic Russian literary heritage to emerge. For the next century, Russian culture would be overwhelmed by imported West European themes, 225

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National Consciousness in Russian Literature

Gamel Nasser Adam

values, and attitudes. French, for example, was the preferred medium of communication; and the French established tradition ingrained in the collective mind of the Russian people that their language was not fit for literature. This sense of inferiority in the Russian literary tradition was only a reflection of a wider crisis of identity and a concomitant warping of the Russian national consciousness, the cumulative effect of which was the lowering of the Russian national self-esteem. This paper argues that Africa today finds itself in a historically analogous situation which manifests itself in a profound confusion of identity and an attendant false consciousness. In fact what parades today as African literature reinforces this identity crisis as most of it is written predominantly in the languages of the continent’s colonial masters. If colonialism was not limited only to economic exploitation but included the cultural subjugation of its victims, then the language vehicle which was used to facilitate the colonial agenda deserves critical attention.

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1. Discourse on the Russian national identity and consciousness In Russia the culture of independent literary creation with a typically Russian national character and style took root around the first decades of the nineteenth century. Soon afterwards, Russian literature gradually metamorphosed from its original leitmotif of entertainment and education into a vehicle for sewing together a Russian nation with a shared community of interests. This new beginning ensured that literature would now relate intrinsically to the life of society itself, and will be judged by its social as well as its aesthetic qualities. Thenceforth the Russian people found in writers their leaders, their defenders and the keepers of their national identity. And the dominant question which defined discourse within the Russian literary circles related to the position of Russia in the comity of European and world cultures. Some of the responses to the discourse on the Russian national essence were extreme. Petr Chaadaev dismissed Russian culture as a figment of the imagination, and in a damning indictment of his native culture, 226

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Gamel Nasser Adam

he angrily proclaimed that it had no authenticity. ‘Alone in the world,’ Chaadaev declared,

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we have given nothing to the world, and bestowed not a single idea upon the fund of human ideas. We have not contributed in any way to the progress of the human spirit, and whatever has come to us from that progress we have disfigured (McNally 1969: 28).

The Russian intellectuals who grouped under the banner of Slavophilism disagreed with Chaadaev, arguing that Russia had its own unique culture which was anchored on the orthodox Christian faith and communalism. The Slavophils condemned the unrestrained importation and adoption of western linguistic elements and cultural values, and contended that Russian identity was not only a superior moral force but also an antithesis to the “unhealthy western influences, which … rested on an unholy, and far too worldly basis of individualism, rationalism and competition” (Sherman 1991: 44). In their opinion, Russia was already contributing significantly to the progress of humanity. A countervailing circle of intellectuals known as the Westernisers on the other hand believed that borrowing from Western European culture was not tantamount to a denial of Russia’s national character, but rather that it nourished the Russian spirit in a way that would guarantee Russia’s progress and renewal. Belinsky, founder of Russian literary criticism, for example, argued that Russian identity was intrinsically bound to Europe by geography, history, religion, and civic culture. He proclaimed that Russia was a power, and that it remained independent to the extent that its distinctness could not be harmed by borrowing from Western European culture. Belinsky believed that it was literature that would define the essence of Russian culture, . . . reintegrating the common people by giving a detailed and authentic account of their life and assimilating their spoken language, not for ethnographic reasons but for moral and cultural ones, to express the Russian national essence (Hosking 2001: 274).

Henceforth Russian literature would commit itself to raising national awareness as a prelude to charting the way to progress. But raising awareness and generating progress would require a certain level of consensus about the identity of Russia itself, its position and relevance in the comity of world cultures. This phenomenon became the harbinger 227

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for the nurturing of a vibrant literary culture. As Aizlewood (2000: 20) observes: . . . a recurrent preoccupation in the tradition of Russian thought, from Chaadaev through to the twentieth century, concerns Russian identity. From Chaadaev onwards, questions concerning the distinctiveness (or the lack of it) of Russian thought, both in approach and subject matter, were linked to questions about Russian identity and Russia’s role and place in the world.

Obernikhina (2007: 27) also argues that

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. . . for Russian literature . . . the first half of the nineteenth century was a time of the most impressive achievements and great discoveries. The artistic word in the works of writers and poets not only reached the highest peaks, it also became an integral part of the Russian social life and national consciousness.

Literature soon stood out as one of the most effective weapons in the arsenal of those forces that stood up against autocratic rule. The Czarist autocracy had sought to consolidate its legitimacy through recourse to such symbols as orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality as components of the defining ideology of the state which would feed into the Russian consciousness. Those who led the fight against the legitimating myths of the czarist autocracy were mainly literary figures who had identified literature with the life of the ordinary people. And so potent was the force behind their literary works that Count S.S. Uravov, Czar Nicholas’ Minister of Education, is reported to have said that “only when literature ceased to be written would he be able to sleep peacefully” (Kochan 1970: 156).

2. The tilting urge of consciousness over identity History has always taught that the power of the ruling class can never rely entirely on its coercive powers alone. A more enduring way of perpetuating the prevailing order is to strive to regulate the behaviour of the people by shaping public consciousness in a way as to be supportive of the status quo. From the socio-political point of view therefore consciousness takes precedence over identity. Whereas identity simply means a sense of belonging or membership of a particular nation or any 228

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other socio-cultural grouping, consciousness requires an awareness and adequate understanding of the forces at play in shaping social realities and how to react to these forces in order to initiate or promote the changes that would suit the exigencies of the moment, and such changes should be in conformity with the legitimate aspirations of the masses of the people. Consciousness therefore is the most critical variable in any struggle directed at resolving social and political crises afflicting a given society. When consciousness is diverted or subverted, the consequence is that the necessary changes in the socio-economic and political foundations are postponed indefinitely. With regard to Africa’s crises of underdevelopment, Anyidoho (1992: 46) argues that

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. . . the historical and contemporary dilemma in which African peoples find themselves reflects a crisis of consciousness, or rather a crisis of lack of consciousness – consciousness about what actually happened to us and the factors responsible for it, consciousness of the ultimate intensions of our ‘partners’ in various abortive programs of development.

He further contends that this lack of consciousness in particular is “about where we were before the stampede unleashed by slavery and colonialism” (Anyidoho 1992: 52). As a result of such distorted consciousness within the African milieu, the much needed changes to the material and intellectual foundations of the African society have continually been jeopardised. The practical consequence of this crisis of consciousness is that the issue of African identity has been degraded to the level of the African’s distinctness relative to the colour of the skin and to a common continental home. It is stripped of the very critical and fundamental consciousness of the historical and contemporary forces responsible for the continent’s present predicament with regard to the experiences and legacy of slavery, colonialism and contemporary neo-colonialism as Anyidoho argues. Equally important, it lies at the heart of the fundamental contradictions in the actions and deeds of a section of the African political leadership. For example, Mobutu Sese Seko launched his “authenticité” programme in the early 1970s ostensibly to rid his country of the lingering vestiges of colonialism and the influence of Western culture, and to create a singular national identity. Yet he was 229

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National Consciousness in Russian Literature

Gamel Nasser Adam

responsible for creating the conditions for the repressive stability in his country for thirty-one years during which he looted his country to the point of bankruptcy. And he did that with the symbiotic collaboration of the same neo-colonial powers of the United States, Belgium, France, whose legacies he claimed he was jettisoning. Another historical episode of the crisis of consciousness in the African milieu can be illustrated by the conduct of Blaise Diagne. As one of the early educated Black political elite in colonial Senegal, Blaise Diagne soon abandoned the goal of independence for his people and became an unrepentant advocate of the French colonial system and an example of its touted success. As deputy from Senegal in the French parliament, his devotion to France was so extraordinary that he probably sang the Marseillaise with tears rolling down his cheeks. During the First World War when France and Europe were facing imminent defeat, Blaise Diagne went to their rescue by mobilising a hundred thousand poorly trained and poorly armed Senegalese troops and rushing them to European front to be used as cannon-fodder against the first German onslaught in the fields of Flanders (Du Bois 1965: 6-7). He never questioned the morality or the justice in sending thousands of his compatriots to be slaughtered in a war which was being fought to secure the freedom of their slave drivers. Blaise Diagne was unambiguous about where his patriotic consciousness and identity loyalty lay. In Paris in 1921, he stunned his audience at a Pan African Congress when he declared: “I am a Frenchman first and a Negro afterwards” (Logan 1962: 44). Historically the aristocratic forebears of Blaise Diagne and his ilk in the Black fifth column played the ignominious role of slave hunters during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And while they were receiving the crumbs of this evil enterprise, John Brown, a non-Black was putting together a mixed-race force of whites and blacks in America with the objective of starting a general armed struggle which would result in the overthrow of slavery in America. Brown’s tiny army was overwhelmed by superior forces, and he and six of his comrades-in-arms were hanged (Foster 1954: 182-186). The argument therefore is that the black-skin-white-mask metaphor serves to tilt the moral pendulum firmly in favour of consciousness. Despite their identity as Africans, the political elite who stepped into 230

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the shoes of the departing colonialists betrayed the liberation agenda and have since continued to conspire with world imperialism in a symbiotic, albeit unequal arrangement, to systematically transfer huge amounts of resources and capital from their impoverished countries and further aggravating the hapless plight of their people as the example of Mobutu clearly demonstrates. At the same time there are non-blacks who have over the years sided with the masses of the African people and have waged persistent struggles against the exploitation of the continent and for a just international economic order. During the years of the anti-apartheid struggles many non-blacks were in the trenches with the African National Congress at the same time that many black Africans chose to collaborate actively with the oppressive apartheid regime. In other words in the struggle against oppression in whatever form it may occur, the moral superiority of consciousness over identity of race or colour of the skin is clearly evident.

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3. Literature and creation of Russian revolutionary consciousness Historically, Russian literature has always been at the forefront of the struggle for political and social change. Great Russian poets and writers have always been the voice of the people’s conscience and soul, and occasionally suffered for it. Eager to control and manage the minds of the population, the czarist authorities endeavoured frenziedly to keep control of the command posts of social institutions and the flow of symbols, values, opinions and information. Expecting the literary circle to be a literary chorus, the authorities reacted repressively to any discordant tune. Nearly all the country’s great poets and novelists—Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky—were harassed by the state censorship for supplying ideas the authorities said were subversive of the contemporary political system (Service 2000: 38). Dostoevsky had once been sentenced to death by firing squad only for the sentence to be commuted at the stakes. In an attempt to purge popular consciousness of revolutionary ideas, especially among students, the works of such writers and thinkers as 231

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Voltaire and Rousseau were removed from the school curriculum. The intellectual and aesthetic value of the written word played second fiddle to the urge to promote the supremacy of the monarchy and to imbibe patriotic discipline in the minds of the students and pupils. But the intellectual curiosity of the rising generation could not be stifled by state-sponsored censorship. Largely due to the fact that the school curriculum disconnected with everyday life, a new generation of politically conscious students arrived, who started looking for an alternative interpretation of the world around them. A new impetus in the direction of this new revolutionary consciousness was provided by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. This was the young revolutionary and thinker who, early in the twentieth century, would provide the political leadership which would mobilise the Russian proletariat to launch the October Socialist Revolution in 1917. Despite its tumultuous history, the October Revolution initiated an unprecedented socio-economic transformation which propelled Russia from the fringes of European socio-economic development to the status of a world power and later to a superpower within a timeframe of less than fifty years. Of course, this system eventually collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions after seventy-four years, and Russia is now reconnecting in its own way to the international capitalist orbit. In his days as a young student, Vladimir Ulyanov was an ardent reader of many classics of Russian literature. His taste moved from Pushkin to Gogol and to Turgenev. There is a school of thought which suggests that a comparable value should be placed on the works of great literary figures alongside Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as sources of Lenin’s revolutionary baptism. Service (2000: 40) specifically mentions “the stories of heroism in the epic poetry of Homer and the prose of Xenophon and Livy—all of which predisposed Vladimir Ulyanov to give high value to the potential role of the individual leader.”

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4. A brief discourse on the distorted African identity and consciousness Anyidoho (1992: 46) suggests that to deal with the crisis of consciousness in Africa, critical attention must be accorded language. He makes the argument that:

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if language is such a fundamental requirement of our society as humans, any disruption in language will inevitably subvert our capacity for human development. In other words, language does (help) create civilization, but it can also (help) destroy or undermine its development. This fact is central to our understanding of the crisis of consciousness that underlies the historical and contemporary dilemma of Africans and African-heritage people all over the world.

Today Africa finds itself in a frantic search for an identity, just as Russia found itself at a corresponding time in its historical development. Just as Russian culture was overwhelmed by imported Western values and attitudes at the close of the seventeenth century, the impact of the colonial presence in Africa constituted a savage chapter in the cultural genocide perpetrated against the people of Africa. Just as French was the preferred medium of communication among the gentry and among the intelligentsia of Russia, a plethora of European languages such as English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese have almost completely displaced indigenous African languages. And if language is one of the most critical differentiating features of the human species, then it is important to pay critical attention to its role in the overall development of the human society, and especially its role in Africa’s socio-cultural and political development. Historically the European languages which are functioning as official languages of African countries were introduced together with the educational systems they propel, as the main working tools with which to fashion out the colonial political, economic and social infrastructure. Because the colonial system had as its ultimate objective the economic exploitation of the colonies in order to support the metropolitan economies, all the instruments of the colonial project including language, were designed to promote this system of exploitation. 233

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During the history of the African slavery and colonization, the imposed languages of the enslaver and colonizer did a great deal to misrepresent human experience and contributed to the situation that lies behind our present crisis of consciousness. Until we forthrightly address the issues involved, until we formulate and execute bold, intelligent strategies for the creation of an effective language plan-of-action, our otherwise excellent blueprints for material development will largely remain at the talking stage (Anyidoho 1992: 47).

Ngūgī had earlier made a similar argument when he stated emphatically that language is an instrument of colonial and neo-colonial subjugation. According to him,

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the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism … is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other peoples’ languages rather than their own (Ngūgī 1987: 3).

In the immediate post-independence period, the result was unmitigated confusion in the African cultural domain. In recent times this confusion has degenerated into tumultuous chaos with the unrelenting pressures of Americanisation of the young African generation. This has produced, and continues to produce, a culturally disoriented population drifting in the world of cultural development like a rudderless dreadnought. The consequences of these on Africa’s stamp of identity and a corresponding consciousness are obvious. The most deleterious of these have been in the areas of neo-colonial identity and consciousness. Neo-colonial identity nurtures an inferiority complex which breeds a profound lack of confidence in the victim. These then combine to reinforce the stereotype that African languages are not fit for literature. By extension, the indigenous African milieu is not capable of matching the levels of socio-economic and cultural development of the advanced industrialised 234

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countries. In other words, neo-colonial identity and underdevelopment have been mutually reinforcing. Such an identity is therefore harmful to the legitimate aspirations of its victims. Apart from its corrosive effects on the political, economic and socio-cultural development of the African people, it also leads to the entrenchment of a false consciousness. The right consciousness should lead to an adequate understanding of the generating causes of the crises inherent in the society as a prelude to constructing the relevant paradigms directed at resolving the said crises. Conversely, a false consciousness engenders a false or at least, an inadequate understanding of the reasons behind Africa’s relative backwardness and contributes to the perpetuation of the present status quo under the general illusion that there is no alternative. Such false consciousness is usually cultivated deliberately by the beneficiaries of the prevailing status quo in order to pre-empt the public agenda, obfuscate genuine public discourse on what Africa and indeed the rest of the world might really be like and how the victims might act to bring about that needed change. The colonialists understood this very well. That was why so much effort was expended on the socio-cultural aspects of the colonial enterprise. This argument can be summarised in Nkrumah’s observations on the social effects of colonialism, which he said . . . are more insidious than the political and economic. This is because they go deep into the minds of the people and therefore take longer to eradicate. The Europeans relegated us to the position of inferiors in every aspect of our everyday life. Many of the people came to accept the view that we were an inferior people. It was only when the validity of that concept was questioned that the stirrings of revolt began and the whole structure of colonial rule came under attack (Nkrumah 1963: 32).

This clearly illustrates the fact that the contours of consciousness can be shaped by political decisions. In fact for several centuries the slave system developed and promoted the false notion that slavery was the natural condition of Black people and that this had divine endorsement. Nkrumah understood very well the urgent need of the political weapon in order to embark on a frontal assault on the social effects of colonialism. This explains the reason why at the very declaration of 235

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independence, he sent the first signals about what he intended to do with the political power the independence movement had just won. In that address he stressed his commitment to ‘create our own African personality and identity’ and reiterated the urgency of reorienting the African consciousness when he declared that “from now on, today, we must change our attitudes and our minds. We must realise that from now on we are no more a colonial but a free and independent people” (Nkrumah 1973: 121). This was a most emphatic indication about the need for the new nation to create a new consciousness to counter the colonial and the neo-colonial mentality that had been created and nurtured by the colonial power. But imperialism was in no mood to countenance any attempt at a consciousness shift which had the potential of upsetting the neo-colonial applecart. This explains the hysterical reaction of the government of the United States to the publication of Nkrumah’s book Neo-Colonialism— The Last Stage of Imperialism in October 1965, whose main purpose was to expose neo-colonialist practices especially in Africa (Nkrumah 1973: 413). Britain was more forthright in its abhorrence of the rise in awareness among the African people. Earlier on the British High Commissioner in Ghana at the time, A.W. Snelling in a dispatch dated 5th September 1961 sent to the Commonwealth Relations Office in London, noted that Nkrumah’s . . . knack of giving expression to the feelings of so many Africans, who are all the time rapidly becoming more and more politically conscious, is exasperating. I can well understand the fury he arouses in London, and often share it myself (cited in Ankomah 2005).1

In other words halting the rising tide of African consciousness of liberation was a major priority of those forces which wanted to maintain the status quo of colonial and neo-colonial consciousness. So far, this has been largely successful. Fifty years after those early attempts at re-engineering the African consciousness in the immediate post-independence period, there still exists a wide gulf between the continent’s legitimate 1

Richard D. Mahoney (1983) and Paul Lee (2001) both provide evidence of how United States intelligence agencies conspired to overthrow Nkrumah and to abort his programme of charting a new path for Ghana and Africa. In fact Lee draws heavily on recently declassified CIA documents to make his case.

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aspirations and the dominant mindset of the majority of its population no matter the level of education. Nowhere is the effect of this paradox more manifest than in the collective amnesia among the African people in relation to their history. The abandoned space is then taken over by some extroverted preoccupations which are robbing the African people of the requisite historical reference points and background for the emergence and development of an authentic consciousness.

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4. The identity of African literature The ambivalence of the African identity and the consciousness crisis has been recognised in the African literary circles. For example the identity of what parades today as African literature has been challenged by many especially Ngūgī (1987: 6). Pointing out the contradiction he asks whether the so-called African literature is referring to literature about Africa or the African experience, or it is literature written by Africans, whether the work of a non-African which is about Africa or that of an African which is set in for example on an alien continent, can qualify as African literature. The embarrassing implication of this reasoning is that African writers have not yet been able to establish the identity of African literature. This ambiguity obviously questions the legitimacy of using an unidentified entity to serve as a vehicle for the creation of a national identity. The fact that this paper has to be communicated in English to an African readership in an African setting, underscores the effects of this profound identity confusion. Just as at a corresponding time in the history of the Russian people, established stereotypes had seared in the subconscious minds of the Russian people that their language, Russian, was not fit for literature so also does the overwhelming obsession with European languages insinuate in the subconscious minds of Africans that our languages are not fit for literature. This sense of inferiority resonates for example in the mentality of Chinua Achebe. He credits Christian missionaries with the creation of what is referred to as ‘Union Igbo’ which is an improvised written form of Igbo, Achebe’s mother tongue, but condemns this foreign-imposed written form as a “strange hodgepodge with no linguistic elegance, natural rhythm, or oral authenticity” (Gallagher 1997: 1). 237

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Achebe has not consented to have his novel, Things Fall Apart, translated into the so-called Union Igbo which he describes as a linguistic travesty. Paradoxically this epic novel has already been translated in more than thirty other languages across the world. In his defence of this ambivalence, Achebe argues that the language of the colonialists was not forced upon their victims.

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It simply is not true that the English forced us to learn their language … We chose English not because the British desired it but because, having tacitly accepted the new nationalities into which colonialism had grouped us, we needed its language to transact our business, including the business of overthrowing colonialism itself in the fullness of time (cited in Anyidoho 1993: 48).

In effect Achebe is arguing that he voluntarily chose to study, and later to write in English, in order to penetrate the colonial fortress with the aim of tearing it down from within. This argument is untenable. It may seem to Achebe that he opted to learn English of his own free will; but it is clear that under the colonial or neo-colonial system, the ladder to socio-political success could be accessed mainly through the imposed educational system and studying the language of the colonial master. The argument about infiltrating the ranks of the colonial and neo-colonial enemy is equally untenable. Imperialism will feel very secure in the presence of an adversary whose mind has been purged of any consciousness that challenges imperialist values. In fact, in spite of the overall critique of the colonial system and the Whiteman’s enterprise in colonial Africa, one of the impressions the reader is most likely to come away with after reading Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is that of a primitive Africa resisting a so-called civilizing mission of colonialism, and this impression tilts the moral argument in favour of imperialism. It is also an abdication of responsibility on the part of Achebe if his protests are merely expressed in the form of resentment of what he refers to as a “linguistic travesty.” This so-called travesty has to be rectified. The English language which Achebe and a bulk of the African educated elites have embraced as our intellectual working tool, did not burst upon the English people and upon the world in one splendid revelation. All the socalled standardised official languages in the world today passed through 238

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periods of evolution. The written forms of most African languages have Christian missionary origins inspired by the desire to translate the Bible into indigenous languages. So also was the Russian language. Written Russian appeared in Russia in the form of sacred scripture. Through the ensuing periods Russian relied heavily on themes and structures from other foreign sources. It took considerable effort on the part of Russian writers to free the Russian language from such dependency. They did this by adapting the imported language elements in a unique and original manner to suit the circumstances of Russia’s needs. And it was a Russian of African ancestry, Alexander Pushkin, who initiated this literary revolution. He did this by creating a new linguistic synthesis which drew on past literary sources and folk culture, and in the process founded what is today known as Russian literature, which means literature of the Russian people written in Russian. Without such a native language the original and unique character of a people can never be expressed in a truly authentic manner. Any alternative attempt at such expression will be an imitation and a caricature of the original culture.

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Conclusion: cultivating an alternative consciousness Apart from Ngūgī’s radical solution which admonishes African writers to write in their indigenous tongues, another literary development which tackles the crisis of African identity and consciousness is the concept of negritude advanced by Aime Cesaire, as far back as 1939 in his famous work Return to My Native Country. The philosophy of negritude rejected the political, social, and moral domination of the West and articulated a countervailing discourse which projected the beauty of the black people and their culture. Though criticised for its contradictions and lack of universality, negritude nevertheless resonated positively among a broad spectrum of Black people, and especially in South Africa within the South African Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko. One of negritude’s most ardent critics is Wole Soyinka whose criticism of the movement is summarised in his famous aphorism that Le tigre ne proclâme pas sa tigritude, il saute sur sa proie (A tiger doesn’t proclaim its ‘tigerness’; it jumps on its prey). The problem this paper sees in this assertion is that if a tiger has been tamed over the years not to be con239

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scious of its natural instincts or capacities, then it would lose its ability to feed itself and would have to rely almost entirely on its tamer for its nourishment and sustenance. The solution to this identity crisis requires the deliberate cultivation of an alternative countervailing consciousness which will have the capacity to unleash the liberating energies of the enslaved people. Obviously, the starting point must be a thorough and critical appraisal of how and why neo-colonial identity and consciousness are generated. This will inevitably expose the African intellectual milieu and the educational system in general as the main culprits. As indicated earlier, the educational system we are operating was imposed by imperialism as its most potent weapon in its arsenal directed at culturally subduing its victims as a necessary prelude to their economic exploitation. The continual failure to decolonise the system since flag independence means that we are actively perpetuating the rapture between Africa’s genuine needs and the type of knowledge and consciousness that are required to adequately and satisfactorily address those needs. The paradigm shift in consciousness has to take place first within the intellectual community because a problem cannot be solved with the same mindset which created it. Literature and the humanities in general have a critical role to play in the struggle to effect this paradigm shift. In their time, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and others created new themes, symbols, heroes and models that put Russian literature in the forefront of the struggle to create a new Russian identity and consciousness. The realities in Africa today demand of the continent’s literary circles the supply of the instruments needed to generate a new and commensurate consciousness capable of neutralising neo-colonial dependency and erecting the foundation that would usher in the next phase of the struggle against underdevelopment and for socio-cultural emancipation.

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References Aizlewood, Robin. 2000. Revising Russian Identity in Russian Thought: From Chaadaev to the Early Twentieth Century. The Slavonic and East European Review. 78(1): 20-43. Ankomah, Baffour. 2005. A Tale of Two Countries. New African. Dec. 1, 2005. URL: http://www.thefreelibrary.com. Accessed November 15, 2009. Anyidoho, Kofi. 1992. Language and Development Strategy in Pan-African Literary Experience. Research in African Literature. 23(1): 45-63. Stable URL: http:// www.jstor.org/stable/3819948. Accessed November 15, 2009. Crowder, Michael. 1978. Colonial West Africa: Collected Essays. London and Totowa: Franc Cass. Du Bois, W.E. Burghardt. 1965. The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Africa has Played in World History. New York: International Publishers. Gallagher, Susan VanZanten. 1997. Linguistic Power: Encounter with Chinua Achebe. Christian Century. March 12. Hosking, Geoffrey. 2001. Russia and the Russians: A History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kochan, Lionel. 1962. The Making of Modern Russia. London: Penguin Books. Lee, Paul. 2001. Documents Expose U.S. Role in Nkrumah Overthrow. URL: http:// www.seeingblack.com/x060702/nkrumah.shtml. Accessed October 10, 2009. Logan, Rayford W. 1962. The Historical Aspects of Pan-Africanism 1900-1945. Pan Africanism Reconsidered. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Mahoney, D. Richard. 1983. JFK: Ordeal in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press.

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McNally, Raymond T. (Ed.) 1969. The Major Works of Peter Chaadaev. Indianapolis: University of Notre Dame Press. Ngūgī wa Thiong’o. 1987. Decolonising the Mind. The Politics of Language in African Literature. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1963. Africa Must Unite. London: Panaf. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1973. Revolutionary Path. London: Panaf. Service, Robert. 1997. A History of Twentieth-Century Russia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Service, Robert. 2000. Lenin: A Biography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Sherman, Russell. 1991. Russia 1815-81: Access to History. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

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Africa’s Renaissance and the Failures of NEPAD

Martin O. Ajei

Africa’s Renaissance and the Failures of NEPAD Africa’s Renaissance and the Challenge of Culture: The Failures of NEPAD Martin O. Ajei The notion of an African renaissance has been a discursive topic since the 1960s. After the first post-apartheid election in South Africa, the term resurfaced in public debate, with vehement contestations concerning its meaning and purposes. This essay explores various conceptions of the term, affirming that the intellectual output of indigenous African cultures is necessary for the achievement of the goals associated with the African renaissance. It is shown how NEPAD assumes the role of a vital vehicle for the achievement of these goals, and how NEPAD fails to take the role of indigenous culture seriously. For this reason, it is argued, NEPAD cannot faithfully discharge the responsibilities it assumes in the pursuit of the ideals of an African renaissance.

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1. An African ‘Renaissance’ or renaissance? The notion of an ‘African Renaissance’ has generated considerable philosophical controversy since its reinvigoration in public discourse in South Africa after the first post-apartheid elections in 1994. An aspect of this controversy relates to the question of whether the phrase can justifiably be applied to the African experience. Regarding this, Ramose points out that although at one level the terms ‘Renaissance’, ‘renaissance’ and ‘renascence’ share a common meaning, namely rebirth, renewal, or revival; this shared meaning dissipates at another level where the Renaissance, with a capital ‘R’, signifies a historical concept1 with Europe 1

A cultural movement that spanned roughly the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, beginning in Florence Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe

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Africa’s Renaissance and the Failures of NEPAD

Martin O. Ajei

as its primary reference point. This makes that term historically and philosophically inapposite to describe the vision and processes of Africa’s resurgence, as it invokes images and agendas unknown to the African experience. Hence insistence on employing the term ‘Renaissance’ in the African context amounts to “denying that the African experience is the appropriate source from which we can choose a key concept to understand and interpret African politics” (Ramose 2002: 600). In Ramose’s view, the term ‘renaissance’ should not be first choice even if one felt compelled to use it to denote visions of regeneration and renewal on the continent. This is because failure to seek out such a key concept from African resources perpetuates the “northbound gaze,” which any serious notion of African progress must renounce (Ramose 2002: ibid.). He therefore suggests the term Mokoko-Hungwe as replacement for ‘African renaissance’. Mokoko, in the Sotho languages means a cock, a bird which in African culture crows to “proclaim the passage from darkness to light. It is the message of the beginning of a new day, a new life” (Ramose 2002: 607). Hungwe, on the other hand, is the Shona name for a sacred bird which the Shona consider as an “indispensable point of contact with the ancestral gods” (Ramose 608). Thus MokokoHungwe symbolises rebirth and regeneration as it invokes “the period for Africa’s reversion to unmodified and unencumbered sovereignty” (Ramose 2002: 608-609). The equivalent of the Shona mokoko in Ewe, a Ghanaian language, is nubuke, which also means a new dawn. This word has inspired the Nubuke Foundation, which perceives its mission as recording, preserving, and promoting innovative thinking about African cultures for new generations “in the face of twenty-first century challenges”2. Kofi Setordji, a Director of the Foundation, asserts that such a mission is imperative for any vision of the future because “you can never project a good vision of the future without using the best of what you have already achieved.”3 This seems to suggest that the vision of nubuke is predicated on the 2

See the brochure on the Foundation at accessed July 19, 2009.

3

Private conversation with Kofi Setordji, at the offices of the Nubuke Foundation, 7 Adamafio Close, East Legon, July 22, 2009.

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Africa’s Renaissance and the Failures of NEPAD

Martin O. Ajei

principles underlying the Akan symbol called “Sankofa, which sanctions the act of reverting to the past to retrieve what you need from it. The point advanced by Ramose and the leadership of the Nubuke Foundation is very well received. Their advocacy for a descriptive term from African cultural resources for a vision of the continent’s renewal is not amiss, given that the articulation and implementation of such a vision cannot but be a cultural event. We register our acceptance of their position by conceptually identifying mokoko-hungwe, nubuke and the adjective renascent with ‘renaissance’. We will therefore recognize these terms as interchangeable descriptive motifs of Africa’s renewal. Such recognition does not preclude drawing comparisons with the Renaissance, which we recognize as a culturally distinct event. Comparisons may be worthwhile to the extent that the Renaissance sheds light on our understanding of the term ‘renaissance’ as it applies to the African experience. Regarding this, three observations may be made. First, it is widely acknowledged among scholars of the Renaissance that its origins can best be found in the transformations that occurred in social organization in Northern Italy in the twelfth century. These were initiated by the transfer of citizens’ allegiance from feudal lords and monarchs to newly formed city states. According to Skinner (1978: 4) this move from nondemocratic polities toward “republican self-government” engendered emphasis on fairness, justice, and political accountability (1978: 69). A second observation to make is that the Renaissance involved the recovery and revival of classical (Greek and Roman) knowledge and values (Burke 1990: 2). This is what is usually meant by the humanistic feature of the Renaissance. The third point to note is that this humanistic revival nurtured the process that eventually led to the discovery of the principles and methods of modern science (Brotton 2005: 99-100). These features are worth noting because they offer some analogies to the historical trajectory of a renascent Africa, as we will come to understand it. Ramose’s understanding of Africa’s reawakening and regeneration as unencumbered sovereignty is an attractive one. It is also a vision that has persisted in African history. Nabudere deepens this latter point with his insistence that such visions and attempts at re-awakening and regeneration “spread the whole landscape of the African peoples’ struggle for freedom” (2001: 22). This position lends credence to Ramose’s thesis 244

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that the vision of an African renaissance in the modern age begins with Edward Wilmot Blyden’s advocacy for the ‘regeneration of Africa by the mid 1800s (Ramose 2002: 603). By all indications this nurtured the re-envisioning of “Africanism” as “pan-Africanism” (Davidson 1994: 79-80), a notion which had matured into a distinct consciousness by 1900 (Asante 2007: 13). Essentially, pan-Africanism entailed “the consciousness of belonging to the African continent and the Negro race and the awareness of membership in that distinctive race, and the desire to maintain the integrity and assert the equality of that race” (Asante 2007: 17). In our view, this consciousness constituted at once a prominent vehicle for, and moment of, an African renaissance. It sustained this dual role, first, through the idea that all people of African descent, whether living on the continent or not, share a common destiny – the destiny of Africa. Secondly, it did so by encompassing various political, cultural and intellectual movements based on shared presumptions and objectives. Zeleza imputes two main such objectives. These are “first, to liberate Africans and the African diaspora from racial degradation, political oppression and economic exploitation; and second, to encourage unity or integration among African peoples in political, cultural and economic matters” (Zeleza 2007: 2). Thus the genesis of Africa’s quest for unencumbered sovereignty, like the beginnings of the European Renaissance, was animated by visions of liberation from oppression. The oppression, in the case of 12th Century Italy, was from social and political structures evolved within a culture shared by both oppressor and oppressed. In this sense we may refer to it as internal oppression. However, the oppressive impetus for pan-African consciousness could be characterised as external, to the extent that it was comprised of European racism against Africans, manifested in the slave trade and colonialism.4 It sowed the seeds of the conceptual framework that enabled pan-African mobilization, identity formation and unity, and established a trajectory of repeated struggles that has run from the mid 1880s through the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist activism 4

This generated a new consciousness by leading Africans to see themselves no longer in terms of small communities but as people belonging to a despised ‘race’

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until today. It is in this sense that pan-Africanism can appropriately be considered “the framework within which we can understand future struggles, including the struggles for an African renaissance” (Nabudere 2001: 24).

2. Pan-Africanism, indigenous culture and the African renaissance

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The anti-colonial and anti-imperialist vision of a renascent Africa brings into focus the works of Kwame Nkrumah and Cheikh Anta Diop. Diop perceived an urgent need for an African renaissance that entailed the concurrent recovery of political sovereignty, economic sovereignty and psychic autonomy (1987: 115-116). A necessary condition of this renaissance is for Africa to utilise the intellectual products of its past, not only by integrating these into contemporary thought and practice but also by evolving them to provide inspiration for its self-development. Diop prescribes two steps in doing this. The first is to demonstrate what is common to African civilisation, which in his view is Africa’s common heritage in Ancient Egypt, because “without a systematic reference to Egypt there can be no true cultural renaissance in Africa” (Diop 118). Secondly, in his view, it would be better for the continent to draw from this common intellectual heritage, guided by notions of what is useful and effective, to construct a Federal States of Africa. Thus, enlightened [Africa’s] self-interest itself argues for the adoption, before late, of a federal system . . . The upshot is that only a continent-wide or a subcontinent-wide federated state can offer a safe political and economic area, stable enough for a rational formula covering the development of our countries with their infinitely varied potentials to be put into effect (Diop 1987: Foreword).

The point in contention is that economic and social development requires decisive political action. Hence political unification, in the form of a federal political entity, must precede attempts at rational organization of Africa’s economies. This conclusion is central to Diop’s contribution to the discourse on Africa’s renaissance. Consequently, I would like to quote extensively from the argument supporting it:

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Once again, we are putting the cart before the horse. We want to create regional economic organizations from which member states can draw maximum benefits, yet we refuse to relinquish even an inch of our respective national sovereignties. There is a serious contradiction here. My opinion is that all such regroupments are bound to fail. In the past, each attempt at regional economic regropument [in Africa] was short-lived. The reason they have failed and continues to fail is simple: the links uniting the parties to all such regional agreements have never been irrevocably binding; nor have the terms of economic cooperation ever been indissoluble (Diop 1987: 95).

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Nkrumah’s views on the subject coincide with Diop’s at many points. In Consciencism, he states that “in the new African renaissance, we place great emphasis on the presentation of history. Our history needs to be written as the history of our society, not as the story of European adventure. African society must be treated as enjoying its own integrity . . .” (Nkrumah 1964: 63). He also advances the thesis that communalism is the socio-political ancestor of socialism (1964: 73).5 In his clearest admittance of the relevance of the cultural past for the future, Nkrumah writes that “”African history can thus become a pointer at the ideology which should guide and direct African reconstruction” (Nkrumah 1964: 63). Nkrumah distinguishes, unambiguously, the sorts of things in Africa’s heritage that he considers useful for its future. According to him, that the basic organisation of many African societies in different periods of history manifested a certain communalism and that the philosophy and humanist purposes behind that organisation [that] are worthy of recapture. A community in which each saw his well-being in the welfare of the group certainly was praiseworthy, even if the manner in which the well-being of the group was pursued makes no contribution to our purposes. Thus, what socialist thought in Africa must recapture is not the structure of the “traditional African society” but its spirit, for the spirit of communalism is crystallised in its humanism and in its reconcili5

Here Nkrumah states that “If one seeks the socio-political ancestor of socialism, one must go to communalism . . . In socialism, the principles underlying communalism are given expression in modern circumstances.

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ation of individual advancement with group welfare” (Nkrumah 1967).6

This acknowledgement that intellectual heritage can be instrumental for a progressive future affirms the philosophical import of Sankofa, to which we alluded in the introductory section. It also strikes an analogy with the retrieval of classical knowledge and values that constituted the humanistic component of the European Renaissance. Again, like Diop, Nkrumah emphasised the contingency of the African renaissance on the continent’s total liberation from imperialism (Nkrumah 2004: ix-x and 255-259), and the political unity of the continent as prerequisite to this liberation (Nkrumah 1998: 217). In fact in his mind, the urgency of such unity could not be overstated: “There is no time to waste. We [Africans] must unite now or perish” (Nkrumah 1997). This vision of a politically unified Africa was well matured in Nkrumah early in his political career, as evinced by his exhortation to Africans to “seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto thee.”7 Diop and Nkrumah confer a proper historical dimension to the development problems of Africa by highlighting the significance of Western injustice as a causal factor of these problems. For them, enduring solutions to these problems can neither be found outside the context of pan-African identity, unity and aspirations; nor without the critical appropriation of in indigenous African knowledge and values. This emphasis on the relevance of indigenous African knowledge and values to any viable vision of the African future may have been what Amilcar Cabral meant when he spoke of a “return to the source”. To him, this meant the critical appropriation of African existence by the African 6

Kwame Nkrumah. 1967. Version accessed on 22 July, 2009 accessed on July 22, 2009.

7

Nkrumah reputedly uttered these words in a speech entitled “Poverty versus Plenty” on the campaign trail in Northern Ghana on March 6th 1949. A record of that speech is not known to be extant, but in his book I Speak of Freedom, London: Heinemann, 1961, p. 16, Nkrumah acknowledges this aphorism by claiming that “Economic freedom, I told them [i.e. the audience], would follow political freedom.”

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elites who had been alienated from their “source” by European culture and history (Cabral 1973: 63). It is not my intention to engage in an elaborate disquisition on the meaning of the phrase ‘African indigenous knowledge and values’. Although such a special discussion is philosophically apposite, I content myself with indicating that the phrase refers to the knowledge, values, and beliefs of African cultures that predate the colonial intervention and still endure to guide, organize and regulate the mental constructs and ways of life of the majority of Africans. Thus far, our understanding of the notion of African renaissance can be summed up as follows: it denotes a vision for renewal repeatedly articulated at various points in African history. This vision centers on the liberation and dignity of the continent and its people in the global arena, secured within the framework of pan-African unity and self-definition. It also highlights the relevance, and need for a critical appropriation, of earlier indigenous intellectual output. Let us then consider this as our tentative definition of the phrase. A more comprehensive understanding of it will emerge at the end of the next two sections.

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3. The ‘Third Moment’ of post-colonial renaissance As indicated earlier, the first post-Apartheid election in South Africa brought in its wake renewed debate on the term renaissance in South Africa (Maloka 2000). A brief excursion into this debate is worth making, as it generated fresh contestations on the meaning and nature of the term. At the onset we note that the political leaders who promoted this current upsurge in the use of the notion were keenly aware of its significance for the historical struggles on the continent. Thus Vusi Mavimbela, political advisor of then South African Vice President Thabo Mbeki, construed the post-Apartheid usage of the term as the “third moment” of the renaissance in post-colonial Africa, following decolonization and the outbreak of democracy across the continent during the early 1990s, which constitute the first and second moments respectively (Mavimbela 1998: 19). It is imperative to read Mavimbela as identifying the anti-colonial movement with the pan-Africanist. On this reading, his ‘first moment’ becomes an achievement of pan-Afri249

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canism as well. Thus understood, this third moment of post-colonial renaissance was amply clarified by Mbeki, Mavimbela’s superior, in a number of speeches between 1996 and 1998. The first of these was “I am an African”8 , and the most illuminating, in my view, is The African Renaissance, South Africa and the World.”9 Key elements of Mbeki’s clarification of the term include self-respect and self-determination by Africans, the establishment of political democratic government on the continent, economic growth, and the improvement of Africa’s standing in the global political arena. These elements resonate strongly with the policy preferences of the African National Congress (ANC) at the close of the 20th Century, as exemplified by its Strategy and Tactics.10 This document declared that our commitment to, and active promotion of, the African renaissance: the rebirth of a continent that has for far too long been the object of exploitation and plunder. It recognizes in the first instance the difficulties wrought on the continent by years of colonialism and unjust international relations, including the debt crisis, underdevelopment, social dislocation, and in some instances untenable political relations underpinned by forms of government that imperialism encouraged for its own selfish interests. However, the essence of our approach is not to mourn this treacherous past; but to find solutions to a complex reality. Therefore, for us, this African renaissance is both a strategic objective and a call to action. It must be underpinned by the mobilization of the people of Africa to take their destiny into their own hands: in the definition and consolidation of democratic systems of government in which the people play an active role, in attaining rapid economic growth that is based on meeting the basic needs of the people, in widening and 8

Thabo Mbeki, Statement on behalf of the African National Congress, on the occasion of the adoption by the Constitutional Bill 1996” Office of the President, 8th May 1996. Other important speeches are (a) Africa’s Time has Come; an address to Corporate Council on ‘Attracting Capital to Africa’ Summit, Chantilly, Virginia, U.S.A., 19-22 April, 1997, and (b) The African Renaissance Statement, delivered to the SABC at the Gallagher Estate, on the 13th August 1998

9

A speech delivered at the United Nations University in Tokyo on the 9th of April 1998.

10 Adopted at its 50th National Conference in 1997

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deepening the scope of economic, political and social integration on the continent, and in joint efforts to prevent and resolve conflicts within and among African nations (ANC 1997).

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4. Culture, ‘ethnophilosophy’ and Africa’s renaissance According to Maloka, the South African debate on the African renaissance can be classified into three perspectives: the globalist, pan-African and culturalist perspectives Makola 2000: 4). He assigns the globalist perspective to Mbeki’s exposition of the ANC’s policy. No reason is given for this characterisation, but the reason may well lie in the consistency of the Mbekian perspective with the policies of the institutions that regulate the global political economy and finance, such as the G8, the World Bank and IMF. In Maloka’s view, the pan-Africanist perspective attempts to locate the South African debate within the broader pan-African tradition, which seeks “African solutions to African problems” (2000: 3). This view supports the claim that the third moment of the post independent renaissance is a late twentieth century version of pan-Africanism; and that its main objective is to confront the challenges of globalisation in an international order dominated by the West (Kornegy and Landberg 1998: 4). In this way, Maloka’s the globalist perspective conjoins with his pan-Africanist perspective. Maloka’s ‘culturalist perspective’ is the most obscure and controversial of the three. This is largely because of his inadequate clarification of the critical terms that he employs in expounding it. According to him, the culturalist perspective “is informed, as it were, by ‘ethnophilosophy’ and sees the African Renaissance as a movement for a return to the ‘roots’” (Maloka 2003: 3). Further, because of its affinity to ethnophilosophy, the culturalist perspective “reflects a serious ignorance of what is now a generally accepted critique of the works of Placide Temples, Lucien Levy-Bruhl and John Mbiti” (Maloka 2003: 3.). The best Maloka does in defining ‘ethnophilosophy’ is to point to instances of it and declare that one of its key elements “is the notion of ubuntu, a concept that has been around for some years but has now recently assumed some popularity”(Maloka 2003: 3). However, we are told that adherents to 251

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this perspective enjoin Africans to discard the “ineffective and culturally relevant institutions and structures that have been promiscuously copied from the West” (Maloka 2003: 3). Clearly, adequate critique of Maloka’s culturalist perspective is difficult to undertake with such scant information as he provides on it. Therefore I will make only brief remarks on the link between a renascent Africa with its culture. First Maloka says culturalists associate the renaissance with “a return to the roots.” They also prescribe discarding ineffective and anachronistic features of foreign cultures that Africans still uphold. These views leave the impression that the culturalists consider harnessing historical and indigenous resources for the renewal of the African continent as important. If this is the claim, then we see that this perspective shares common traits with the pan-Africanist perspective which, as we have seen, is also strongly linked with the globalist. This leads to the suggestion that perhaps Maloka’s perspectives are not to be seen as exclusive categories but merely as related components of a comprehensive vision for Africa’s regeneration. Regarding ethnophilosophy, it is pertinent to observe that it is a term which many philosophers use derogatorily to characterise traditional African thought. In so doing, they strenuously reject the status of philosophy to this type of thought. These authors offer a variety of reasons for their rejection. Masolo reports Marcien Towa’s claim that ‘ethnophilosophy’ is not philosophy because it fails to “submit the philosophical and cultural heritage to a critical examination (and evaluation) without complacency” (Masolo 1994: 166). Kwasi Wiredu, on his part, rejects ‘ethnophilosophy’ because, for him, it is essentially a system of pre-scientific folk world-views (Wiredu 1980: 37) with little relevance to modern life. What Africa needs is modernisation; yet these folk world-views harbour three evils—anachronism—authoritarianism and supernaturalism—which tend to defeat the drive toward modernisation (Wiredu ibid.). Paulin Hountondji, on the other hand, employs the term ‘ethnophilosophy’ to refer to a “collective system of thought, common to all Africans, or at least to all members severally, past, present and future, of such-and-such an African ethnic group” (Hountondji 1983: 55-56). It therefore breeds the myth of unanimism and the myth of consensus (Hountondji 1983: 174). 252

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There have been a number of measured responses to these criticisms, including those of Gyekye (1995) and Oluwole (1988: 159). Gyekye argues among others that the term ethnophilosophy is confusing (Gyekye 1995: xviii-xix). The theses of philosophical utterances are, by definition, products of individual minds (Gyekye 1995: 24-25). Therefore the notion that there could be a philosophy authored by an ‘ethnos’, is confusing! He maintains that an individual’s ideas could be so appealing as to lead to its being cherished and appropriated by many members of his or her society. In traditional African societies where orthography was not practiced, such ideas could descend into the society’s common pool of knowledge and values, and assume the character of communal knowledge or values. However, this would not warrant their being considered ‘collective thought’, given their pre-established status as products of individual minds. In subscription to Gyekye’s views, we note that philosophy, as a practice, essentially involves a critical examination of what Appiah calls “necessary questions”11 and themes encountered in human experience. Although the critical nature of such examination is normally adjudged by certain formal requirements, like the logical relations between the sections of an argument, there is no universal and exhaustive definition of these requirements. Therefore, no particular set of such requirements can constitute the final arbiter of the philosophical character of thought, everywhere. This is because philosophy does not, and cannot, occur in a cultural vacuum. It is a function of every human culture. We will therefore venture an interpretation of Maloka’s statement that the culturalist perspective relies on ‘ethnophilosophy’, to mean the following: that the perspective seeks to derive the purposes and principles of the African renaissance from the values and knowledge of indigenous African philosophical thought. This brings us to a point where we can justifiably reaffirm the idea that culture is a vital point of departure for the African renaissance. This insight is cogently stated by Prah, who insists “African progress must be culturally reconstructed on the basis 11

According to Appiah (1989) these are questions that are so fundamental to the experience and welfare of human beings that they compel the attention of the wise person.

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of indigenous heritage” because “culture is the source and essence of identity” (1998: 71). At this point we can sum up our understanding of the term African renaissance as it will be employed in the rest of this essay. We begin by noting that it denotes a projection into the future inspired by the African past. As such it embodies simultaneous deconstructive and reconstructive tasks. The deconstructive exercise is a necessary condition for the ‘unencumbered sovereignty’ of Africa. As pointed out earlier, the need for liberation has been argued from the infancy of pan-Africanism. In his Tokyo speech, Mbeki reiterated one of the main reasons why liberation still serves as a cardinal motive and goal of the African renaissance. He illustrated how a millennium of documented portrayal of Africa has not succeeded to dim the perspective of Africans as a “peculiar species of humanity” best depicted by “images of savagery” (Mbeki 1998: 2). Such constructions of savage and primitive imagery of Africa, replete in the racist intellectual output and oppressive structures of European dominance of Africa through slavery and colonialism, effectively humiliate the consciousness of the African, thus compelling her into a condition that “contests any assertion that she is capable of initiative, creativity, individuality and entrepreneurship” (Mbeki 1998: 2). Mudimbe has pointed out that a humiliated consciousness also effects an alienated discourse among African intellectuals who try to escape from the harshly negated past by continuing to define their world on the basis of western epistemological categories (1998: x). This alienation constitutes “an estrangement from the meaning of ourselves”, suffered from the obliteration of the “standards and practices of our fathers” (Serequeberhan 1998: 9-12). The deconstructive element of the renaissance seeks to liberate the African from this self-estrangement by negating these negative images and humiliated consciousness. In this way the renaissance seeks to restore to the African psyche self-confidence and a “fresh sense of personal identity, one which leads to a sense of well-being” (Okumu 2002: 20). The liberated self then becomes invested with renewed motivation and vigour for the other necessary task of the renaissance, which is the (re)construction of a future of peace, inclusive and stable societies, economic prosperity and intellectual creativity. Such a reconstruction is 254

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envisioned to be undertaken within a unified pan-African consciousness and polity, and in such manner as to safeguard and deepen the regenerated African self.

5. NEPAD and the African renaissance:

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The level of success achieved in the implementation of the visions constituting the African renaissance will undoubtedly depend on how well its deconstructive and reconstructive features are incorporated into the spirit, structures and ethics of the implementing institutions and frameworks. In this respect, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), more than any other framework, is worth interrogating. NEPAD was endorsed in October 2001 by the Assembly of Heads of State of the OAU as the main and current policy document for Africa’s development.12 It is also legitimately considered by Africa’s political leadership as well as theorists and commentators on Africa’s development as the foremost expression, in public policy, of the ideals and values of the African renaissance.13 For these reasons, we affirm it as the principal vehicle devised for the realisation of the goals of the renaissance. This role is affirmed by the founding (base) document of NEPAD (OAU 2001: paragraph 47).14 It is in view of these that this section seeks to explore the question of the extent to which NEPAD can convey Africa to the destination of its vision of rebirth and regeneration. 12 The Africa Union has adopted NEPAD as its development plan. See The AU’s The Strategic Plan at . This is affirmed by the Durban Declaration (of July 10, 2002, by the African Union) in which African leaders vow to adopt the objectives of NEPAD as “a programme of the African Union…” 13 The origins of NEPAD are co-extensive with various events at the turn of the millennium which exhibited recognition by African leaders of the need for a coherent continental agenda for meeting Africa’s development challenges. In July 2002, the OAU was transformed into the AU. This was preceded by the synthesis of President Wade of Senegal’s OMEGA Plan and the Millennium Action Plan (MAP) of President Mbeki into the New African Initiative (NAI), which was inaugurated in July 2001 by the Assembly of Heads of State of the OAU. It is NAI that was re-christened NEPAD in October of the same year. 14 All numbers in reference to the NEPAD document refers to paragraphs of the document rather than page numbers.

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NEPAD purports to constitute a ‘partnership’ at two levels. At the first level it is envisaged as a partnership of African countries with the governments and owners of capital in the Western world. Success at this trans-continental partnership is considered desirable for two reasons: to help change the historical relationship between Africa and the West in order to discard the “dependency through aid” syndrome that underpins it (OAU 2001: para. 5) and to help generate “capital flows to Africa, as an essential component of a sustainable long-term approach to filling the resource gap” (OAU 2001: para. 153). At the second level is a partnership among African countries. This is required principally for implementing the ‘Programme of Action’, fashioned to derive maximum gain from the anticipated capital flows (OAU 2001: paras. 27, 47, 60). NEPAD adopts some of the key principles of the African renaissance in its post-apartheid format. For instance, it upholds the view that development is a process of self-empowerment and self-reliance. Consequently, it rejects the condition of dependency (OAU 2001: para. 27). This underlies the document’s claim to being an “African-owned and African-led development programme”, a status which, according to the authors of the document, sets it apart from all previous initiatives and approaches to Africa’s development (OAU 2001: para. 60). Besides its principles and visions, the document also outlines a ‘Programme of Action’ for restoring the integrity of Africa in its relations with the world. The “Conditions for Sustainable Development”, comprising of four initiatives,15 form the centre of this programme. The goals and initiatives fully coincide with those of Mbeki’s and the ANC’s vision of the African renaissance.

6. NEPAD’s democratic deficit NEPAD is subject to much criticism, the substantiation of any of which will weaken its status as a principal vehicle for attaining the visions of a renascent Africa. One of these is the “democratic deficit” (Olukoshi and Graham 2006: xv), considered by many commentators as a major blem15 These are the Peace and Security Initiative, Democracy and Political Governance Initiative, the Economic and Corporate Governance Initiative, and the Sub-regional and Regional Approaches to Development. See NEPAD document, paragraphs 71-98.

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ish on the making of the document. This ‘deficit’ refers to two related blunders committed by the architects of the document. The first is their failure to engage with Africans generally on whose behalf the initiative was supposed to have been designed. The second blunder consists in disregarding sectors of African society and institutions that would have contributed valuable insights to ensure that the framework seeks best solutions to the most compelling problems facing the continent. The actual origin of NEPAD may be located in the mandate granted by the OAU Summit in 2000 to three African presidents16 to “engage the developed North with a view to developing a constructive partnership for the regeneration of the continent” (AU 2002).17 This engagement yielded, among others, the integration of the Omega Plan with Millennium Action Plan (MAP) into New African Initiative (NAI). Between July and October 2001, those at the helm of the process of transforming NAI into NEPAD intensified discussions with officials of the G8 to negotiate and conclude “a mutually acceptable NEPAD” (Olukoshi and Graham 2006: xv). However, during this period, African civil society, the private sector, and even national legislators were not allowed any significant inputs into the document. This is one manifestation of the deficit. The deficit is also reflected in the suggestion that ‘good governance’ is a necessary condition for [economic] development (OAU 2002: para. 79). Adesina points out that this amounts to defining the notion in terms of “the provision of a stable environment for private capital, ensuring the sanctity of contracts, and guaranteeing that expropriation [of private investment by government] would not happen” (Adesina 2006: 41). Undoubtedly, ample evidence can be adduced to show that much of Africa’s deficit of ‘good governance’ derives from other factors than the provision, willy-nilly, of an enabling environment for the flourishing of private capital. One could argue, for instance, that governments in many African states do not measure up to the standards of ‘good governance’ because they fail to ensure the security and welfare of the citizens 16 These are President Mbeki, Bouteflika and Obasanjo 17 See the ‘NEPAD Progress Report: July 2002’ submitted to the inaugural summit of the African Union.

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of those states. This is a judgment one can concede to. But granting this would in no way invalidate the thrust of Adesina’s point, which is that NEPAD’s preoccupation with private capital inflows has blinded it to the need to explore alternative means of structuring African economies for growth that are more organic and conducive to the interests of the citizens who should be the rightful owners of those economies. It is in this sense that NEPAD, through the notion of good governance, helps to bend the African state toward becoming a vehicle for the practice of neo-liberal economic doctrines (Adesina 2006: 40). In this way, it encourages removing macro-economic policy making from the arena of public debate and thereby compromises the accountability of governments to their citizens. In this way, NEPAD debases democratic values and processes on the continent. Some commentators incline towards the view that the expectation of adequate consultation with civil society in the preparation of the document overstates the limits of what its promoters could have done. This is because “Africa is yet to see a [development] programme that will ‘start from the people’; even the OAU declaration and the celebrated Lagos Plan of Action, as well as the United Nations Millennium Declaration, followed a top-down approach, and were all driven by the political elite” (Maloka 2006: 95-96). This seems to be explicit justification for the democratic deficit. Our brief response to this point of view is that earlier failures in participatory approaches to policy making should not validate similar failures in the fashioning of a document that proposes to establish the policy framework for, and strategies for achieving, a renascent Africa. Hence, in our view, the democratic deficit not only exhibits the profoundly undemocratic disposition of the authors of the document, but it also substantiates the view that “the World Bank, IMF and allied bilateral lending agencies retain the last word” (Olukoshi and Graham 2006: xv) in Africa’s development goals. This raises considerable doubts about NEPAD’s positive role in achieving the renaissance.

7. NEPAD’s northbound and neoliberal gaze Another criticism of NEPAD is that it is unduly donor-focused in respects that are hardly consistent with the envisioned renaissance. As 258

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mentioned earlier, a main objective of the “partnership” is to generate foreign capital inflows. Such a focus has forced a sterile approach to the crisis of poverty in Africa. As Adesina points out, none of the six task teams established to implement the “sectoral priorities” of the Programme of Action is directly concerned with poverty reduction or eradication (Adesina 2006: 34). Further, the document states unequivocally that one of its key objectives regarding poverty reduction is to “accelerate implementation and adoption” of existing poverty reduction initiatives of multilateral bodies such as the World Bank and IMF.18 The thought that these externally designed initiatives are among the most viable strategic solutions to poverty reduction or eradication on the continent not only belittles the immensity of the crisis of poverty in Africa but also the ability of local resources, when well harnessed, to solve the crisis. This is largely because these initiatives are underpinned by the assumption that economic reform (market liberalisation and privatisation) and ‘democratic governance’ will yield better rewards of trade, foreign investment and aid. Adesina remarks appositely, that such deference to the Bretton Woods institutions and G8 countries fosters “the idea that there is no alternative to neo-liberal social and economic agenda” (Adesina 2006: 37). But besides this restricted view of a conceptual direction for social and economic progress pointed out by Adesina, the adoption of these strategies undermines beneficial and lasting solutions to Africa’s developmental problems in as much as they affirm and deepen a paradigm that has led to the situation which a renaissance seeks to reverse. Therefore by legitimising these strategies, runs the risk of surrendering the ‘cardinal principles’ at the core of the post-independence African-driven and Africa-focused developmental frameworks. Some of these principles are self-reliance, self-sustainment, socio-economic transformation, holistic human development and democratization of the development processes (Maloka 2006: 91). The irony of the situation is that these institutions would have good reason to reject responsibility for any negative consequences of the surrender of these principles, because NEPAD exonerates them from any such responsibilities by insisting that it is an “African owned and African 18 NEPAD document, paragraph 118-119.

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driven” framework. NEPAD then becomes one more of the means by which the wealthy West institutionalise, legitimise and deepen its oppressive relations with Africa. These characteristics of the framework substantiate its ‘northbound gaze’ and refute its claim to an African pedigree.

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8. NEPAD and African culture NEPAD’s claim to being “African-owned and African-led development programme” committed to the self-reliance and sustained upliftment of Africa (OAU 2001: para. 27) leads to the expectation that it assigns a vital role to the knowledge and values of indigenous African cultures in designing its structures and procedures. It is not our intention to engage in an elaborate disquisition on the meaning of the phrase ‘African indigenous knowledge and values’. Although such a special discussion is philosophically apposite, we content ourselves with indicating that the phrase refers to the knowledge, values, beliefs of African cultures that predate the colonial intervention and still endure to guide, organize and regulate the mental constructs and ways of life of the majority of Africans. Thus defined, it is our contention that these knowledge and value traditions continue to be systematically discarded from the global construction of ‘civilized’ knowledge and values. Yet they harbour important principles that, if prudently appropriated, will help NEPAD and the African renaissance. One may be tempted into thinking that NEPAD cherishes these traditions, with its repeated praises for African culture. For instance, it acknowledges as one of the continent’s important resources, “the richness of Africa’s culture and its contribution to the variety of the cultures of the global community” (OAU 2001: para. 10). It also affirms Africa’s rich cultural legacy, reflected in literature, art and philosophy, among others (OAU 2001: para. 182). The document claims further that it is “essential to protect and effectively utilise indigenous knowledge and to share this knowledge for the benefit of mankind” (OAU 2001: para. 143). However, in spite of these declarations, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that NEPAD accords trivial significance to Africa’s intellectual heritage. This conclusion is supported by a number of reasons. 260

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First, the document seems to propose that Africa’s “rich cultural legacy” should serve merely as a “means to consolidating the pride of Africans in their own humanity and of confirming the common humanity of the peoples of the world” (OAU 2001: para. 182). On this reading, Africa’s knowledge and value traditions are expected to be showcased benignly in the museum of global knowledge production and application. Further, the document makes no attempt to ‘effectively utilise’, in its goals and programmes, the wealth of local knowledge and values it alludes to. Eight sets of actions are listed as necessary for achieving the objectives of the partnership (OAU 2001: para. 49). The intellectual resources of African cultures are not mentioned once as of any use in achieving these. Neither are these resources considered useful for guiding the conditions for sustainable development (OAU 2001: paras. 71-98), nor for the sectors prioritised as means to enabling Africa to participate in the globalisation process (OAU 2001: paras. 99-146). In these ways, the document woefully fails to meet the expectation that it incorporates Africa’s indigenous intellectual resources into strategies for actualising the visions of the African renaissance.

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Conclusion This essay has interpreted the ‘African renaissance’ as a vision for the restoration and projection of glorious features of Africa’s achievements into the global arena, by pursuing a number of deconstructive and reconstructive goals. These goals seek to reinstate irreversible self-confidence to the African psyche and enable Africans to construct a future of peace, inclusive and stable polities, economic prosperity and intellectual creativity within a pan-African framework and in such manner as to safeguard and deepen the regenerated African self. However, NEPAD, when considered as the primary instrument for the achievement of these goals, de-centres them in a number of ways, while purporting to be an African-owned and African-focused policy framework. This ambivalence does the opposite. This dubious stance greatly undermines its ability to further the goals of the African renaissance. The most serious of its defective posture is its questionable treatment of the intellectual heritage of Africa. This treatment constitutes a humiliation to African cultures in as 261

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much as it suggests that they lack the appropriate intellectual resources for the continent’s regeneration. Given these flaws, it is very doubtful that NEPAD is the right framework for addressing the core problems hindering Africa’s development and projecting the continent into a future of unencumbered sovereignty. Yet it is precisely at this moment of the need for a rebirth that a development paradigm predicated on philosophic ethic emanating from the knowledge and values systems of indigenous Africa is needed to define visions of an African future and liberate the continent from the intoxicating prison of a future constructed on the ethic of profit making. From this point of view, NEPAD’s humiliation of African cultures is unpardonable.

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References Adesina, J. O. 2006. Development and the Challenge of Poverty: NEPAD, postWashington Consensus and Beyond. In Africa and Development Challenges in the New Millennium: The NEPAD Debate. Dakar: CODESRIA. African Union (AU). 2002. NEPAD Progress Report: July 2002. Midrand: NEPAD Secretariat. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1989. Necessary Questions—An Introduction to Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Asante, S. K. B. 2007. Ghana and the Promotion of Pan-Africanism and Regionalism. Accra: Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. Brotton, J. 2005. The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction. London: Oxford University Press. Burke, P. 1990. The Spread of Italian Humanism. In The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe. A. Goodman and A. Mackay (Eds.) London: Longman. Cabral, A. 1973. Return to the Source: Selected Speeches. New York: Monthly Review Press. Davidson, Basil. 1994. The Search for Africa: A History in the Making. London: James Currey. Diop, C. A. 1987. Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State. H. J. Salemson (Transl). Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. Gyekye, Kwame. 1995. African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hountondji, Paulin J. 1983. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. London: Hutchinson.

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Kornegy, F. and C. Landberg. 1998. Mayivuke Africa! Can South Africa Lead an African Renaissance? Center for Policy Studies, PIA: vol. 11, no. 1. Maloka, E. T. 2000. The South African ‘African Renaissance’ Debate: A Critique. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa. http://www.polis.sciencespobordeaux.fr/ vol8ns/arti1.html>. [Accessed on July 3, 2009]. Maloka, E. T. 2006. NEPAD and its Critics. In Africa and Development Challenges in the New Millennium: The NEPAD Debate: A Critique. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa. Masolo, D. A. 1994. Philosophy in Search of Identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mavimbela, V. 1998. The African Renaissance: A workable dream. In South Africa and Africa: Reflections on the African Renaissance. A. Nieuwkerk and K. Lambrechts (Eds.) Foundation for Global Dialogue., Occasional paper No. 17. Mbeki, Thabo. 1998. The African Renaissance, South Africa and the World. Speech delivered at the United Nations University, April 9th.

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Mudimbe, V. Y. 1998. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nabudere, D. 2001. The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalisation. African Journal of Political Science. vol. 6, no. 2. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1961. I Speak of Freedom. London: Heinemann. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1964. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development with Special Reference to the African Revolution. London: Heinemann. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1967. African Socialism Revisited. In Africa: National and Social Revolution. Cairo: Peace and Socialism Publishers. Version consulted located at [Accessed on July 22, 2009]. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1997. We Must Unite Now or Perish. In Selected Speeches of Kwame Nkrumah. S. Obeng (Ed.) vol. 5. Accra: Afram Publications. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1998. Africa Must Unite. London: Panaf. Nkrumah, Kwame. 2004. Neo-colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Panaf. Okumu, W. A. J., 2002. The African Renaissance: History, Significance and Strategy. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. Olukoshi, A, and Y. Graham. 2006. Preface. In Africa and Development Challenges in the New Millenium: The NEPAD Debate. J. O. Adesina, A. Olukoshi and Y. Graham (Eds.) London: Zed. Oluwole, S. 1988. African Philosophy as Illustrated in Ifa Corpus. African Philosophy 11 (2).

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Organization of African Unity (OAU). 2001. The NEPAD Document. Addis Ababa: OAU. Prah, K.K. 1998. Between Distinction and Extinction: The Standardization of African Languages. Casas Book Series No.1. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Ramose, M. 2002. ‘African Renaissance’: A northbound gaze. In Philosophy from Africa. P. H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux (Eds.) Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Serequeberhan, T. 1998. Philosophy and Post-Colonial Africa. In African Philosophy. E.C. Eze (Ed.) Oxford: Blackwell. Skinner, Q. 1978. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Vol. 1: The Renaissance. Cambridge University Press. Wiredu, K. 1980. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge University Press. Zeleza, P. T. 2007. The Contemporary Relevance of an-Africanism. Speech given at the Launch of the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, September 21, 2007.

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The Music of Amu and Riverson

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The Music of Amu and Riverson The Music of Ephraim Amu and Isaac Daniel Riverson: The Known’ and ‘The Not Known’ Ghanaian Composers Timothy E. Andoh

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Social interactions have very much conditioned the character of many African compositions. Composers either received their musical education in Europe or were educated locally under European educational conditions. Though these interactions, to a large extent, have affected the works of composers, the traditional artistic thinking of some of the composers has remained intact. Two composers, Ephraim Amu and Isaac Daniel Riverson, impacted very positively on their audiences with music they composed, compositions which in some cases became identified with the land of their birth. The paper discusses some of the reasons why they might be referred to as ‘the known’ and ‘the not known’ composers, with emphasis on their choral compositions.

Introduction Many gifted musicians have enriched the musical landscape of the Ghanaian music scene, from colonial times to the present. There are many musicians and composers, as well as performers such as organists/pianists, whose life activities as practicing musicians are not known because hard documentary evidence about them are difficult to come by. There are many Ghanaian choral composers, especially composers dating from the introduction of Christianity into the country, who are not known and whose works are not, and may never be known until attempts are made to bring such composers up for mention and for seri265

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ous study. Such names as Alfred Entsua-Mensah, T.W. Kwami, J.M.T. Dosoo, A.A. Onwona-Safo and M.K. Amissah, to mention just these few, may be known for a few of their compositions. Some other names such as Maison, Yankey, Adu Pakoh, may not be familiar at all. But of those that are known, how many know any of their choral works or know about their backgrounds? It is important that in-depth studies of Ghanaian composers are done to bring out more fully the music heritage of Ghana. It is by undertaking such studies that information about composers would be made available not only to students and scholars of music, but also to the various individuals who are interested in knowing generally about composers of Ghanaian music and music of Ghana. The bulk of Ghanaian art compositions are choral. It is perhaps appropriate to mention the fact that the history of the introduction of certain types of European music to Ghana is closely tied with the history of the Christian missions, especially with the activities of the European traders. It is recorded that when the Portuguese first set foot on the coast, they suspended the banner of Portugal on the bough of a lofty tree, and celebrated the first Mass on the coast of Guinea on January 19, 1482. (Baeta 1967; Williamson 1965). This celebration of the Mass marked the beginning of the introduction of European music onto the Ghanaian music scene (Andoh 2007). It is also to be noted that King John III of Portugal instructed the governor taking care of his country’s interest on the coast in Elmina that the children of Elmina village should learn to read and write, [and learn] how to sing and pray while ministering in church (Williamson 1965). It is noted from these that western music traditions had been practiced in Ghana from the time that the Europeans first set foot on the coast of Guinea. And, like most literate musicians of the colonial period, many of the composers of the early Ghanaian era, from about the 1890s to the 1950s, began to compose in the style of the western idioms they were familiar with. It is, therefore, not surprising that the bulk of the output of these early composers was made up of choral works. This paper is about two Ghanaian choral composers—composers whose works have touched the lives of many Ghanaians at many points, in line with the observation by Almeida (1970) that music in Africa relates to the activities of daily living. These two composers, Ephraim 266

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Amu and Isaac Daniel Riverson, are referred to as ‘the known’ and ‘the not known’ Ghanaian composers, respectively. ‘The known’ because the mention of the name ‘Amu’ evokes in the Ghanaian, irrespective of age or gender, the essence of Ghanaian choral culture—Amu is referred to as the father of Ghanaian choral music, the father of African rhythm, and the father of African music, to mention just a few standard associations. The name ‘Amu’ brings to mind the innovation that was brought into instrumental music education in Ghana with the introduction of the innovative atântâbân musical instrument. The name ‘Amu’ also brings to mind the new choral style which Nketia (1978) referred to as the ‘choral anthem’ or ‘Amu’ model, a style which was brought into being by him, and which many Ghanaian composers adopted as their composition style. He not only perfected the traditional instrument, but also came out with an ensemble of atântâbân instruments comprising of atânâbânba, atântâbânba, atântâbân, odurugyaba, and odurugya. On the other hand, the mention of ‘Riverson’ evokes just the opposite emotion. Indeed, it raises eyebrows and questions: Who is Riverson? What has he done for Ghanaian choral music? Is he a composer, musician, educationist, choral director, or conductor? In essence, Riverson is ‘the not known’ composer. The use of the expressions ‘the known’ and ‘the not known’ needs to be explained in the context of this essay. They are used is the sense of the popular and the not popular, not in the sense of the known and the unknown. Indeed, the use of ‘the not known’ is not used in the sense of the unheard of, or unfamiliar, because Riverson is a very well-known composer in educational and church circles. He is remembered for the songs that he composed to celebrate the centenary of the Methodist Church, Ghana. He is known also for the authorship of the Atlantis Music Readers series, publications which were very popular and were standard texts for the teaching of music from the basic level through to the training college level. But definitely, of the two composers under consideration, of course Amu is the more regularly celebrated, more often mentioned, more widely recognized, more frequently heard of, more familiar, and more sung. Why this is so may emerge in the sections that follow.

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1. The formative years of the two composers Much has been written about the works of Amu (Agawu 1984; Nketia 1978; Agyemang 1988), and indeed, the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Center for African Music and Dance have instituted an Amu Memorial Lectures series, with prominent and distinguished academics discoursing on the works of Amu, but not much on the works of Riverson. Andoh (2007) has looked at the nationalistic elements in the choral works of Riverson, while Turkson (1987) and Mensah (1991) looked at the contributions of Riverson especially with the notation of traditional African rhythm. Both Amu and Riverson were born in September—Amu in September 13, 1899 at Peki-Avetile in the Volta Region, and Riverson in September 5, 1901 at Cape Coast in the Central Region. Amu grew up in a home that was once part of the traditional music environment, for his father was a traditional drummer before he became a Christian and gave up drumming. At school in Peki, he took great interest in music. He was taught to play the harmonium by his teacher, Mr. Ntem, before he went on to study at the Abetifi Presbyterian Seminary, where he was introduced to the rudiments and theory of music. After completion of his training, he did more studies in music theory and harmony. When posted to teach at Peki-Blengo, he received a further boost in his study of music under the tutelage of the Rev. J.E. Allotey-Pappoe. Between 1921 and 1923, when Amu started teaching at Peki-Blengo, Rev. AlloteyPappoe was his ‘principal teacher in the art and craft of music’, to the extent that when the reverend was transferred to Accra, Amu continued to receive music instruction and direction from him. Amu had also at this time started to compose his own music, in a style which was very much in the Western hymn style but very popular because he wrote in a style which was different—he wrote in the local language. Riverson, on the other hand, was born on September 5, 1901, two years after Amu at Cape Coast, to a father who played the concertina. His grandmother was also for many years an organist at the Anomabo Methodist Church. We would say that he was born into a music family. He showed such promise in music that at the age of ten he was admitted a member of the Cape Coast Methodist Church choir—there 268

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were no junior choirs in the country then. Such was his enthusiasm and passion for music that he was taught the rudiments of music by one Edward Biney, a teacher at the Wesley Methodist School, who also taught him how to play the organ. He passed the National College of Music, London, Theory of Music at the age of 13 years. He had also at this time already started playing the organ at church services of the Cape Coast Methodist church. After elementary school he went on to the Government Training College, Accra, and graduated a certified teacher in December 1922. At the end of the course, the Director of Education had the desire to have him appointed as a teacher in the Government Training College, but the General Superintendent of Methodist Schools wrote to the Director of Education that “the Church could ill dispense with the services of Riverson,” and so he was called into the service of the Methodist Church and appointed a senior teacher at the Cape Coast Methodist Senior School. The parallels in the lives of these two musicians should not be lost. While Amu had started composing in the early 1920s, Riverson had also established himself as a competent organist. On completion of their training as teachers, the two musicians were posted to teach in their respective alma maters—Amu to teach at the Peki-Blengo Senior School in 1921, and Riverson to the Cape Coast Methodist Senior School in 1922. It must be emphasized that while Amu learnt all the music theory and harmony from Rev. Allotey-Pappoe and through private studies, which prepared him for the position he took later as a member of staff at the Presbyterian Training College, at Akropong in 1927, Riverson also had had the benefit of studying under his teacher Mr. Biney and also through private studies, with some of the Royal Schools of Music. Between 1927 and 1936, he had obtained the following diplomas from these endeavours: Associate Music Diploma, Licentiate Music Diploma, and the Fellowship Music Diploma, all from the Victoria College of Music, London. Amu taught at the Peki-Blengo Senior School until 1927, when he took up appointment as a teacher at the Akropong Presbyterian Training College. At Akropong, he was given every encouragement to explore African ways of making music by Rev. Thomas Beveridge, a Scottish missionary. It was also while he was at Akropong that he received a request 269

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from one of his former pupils at Peki for a song in an African language to be sung on Empire Day. The request turned out to be fortuitous, for it turned to be a song that, perhaps, helped to catapult Amu to national status. The song he wrote, which was later translated from the original Ewe to Twi, was Yân ara asaase ni (literally, This is Our Own Land) which has been adopted as a national song. It was also while at Akropong that he started teaching some of his compositions to the Singing Bands in the area, songs which were very different from what the congregations were used to. The purely danceable lilt of the songs presented a problem to the Church authorities, who virtually could not do anything to stop the songs from being sung. In 1932, Amu published a collection of his compositions under the title Twenty-five African Songs. The reviews bear testimony to the ready acceptance of the publication; they also bear testimony to the fact that the songs of Amu were national in character, and that they touched on the very core of what the Ghanaian had been expecting from composers all along. These works by Amu paved the way for other Ghanaian composers to compose in their own native language. Prior to this, many composers had just been composing hymn tunes, anthems, and other types of works in English. Mention can be made of Reverend Allotey-Pappoe, Charles Graves, and others too numerous to mention. Amu began to meet with opposition from the church authorities on the grounds that he was preaching in cloth and teaching African songs and drumming in the College. Things eventually came to a head when in 1934 he was asked to leave the College. But just as he was packing out of Akropong, another opportunity beckoned: he was invited to Achimota to teach music in addition to other subjects. It must be stated that it was while he was at Akropong that he became a national figure as an innovative composer. This reputation remained with him during his life time, and continues today. Riverson, on the other hand, spent the best part of his life as a teacher in Methodist institutions and as an organist in the Methodist Church. He taught at the Cape Coast Methodist Senior School from 1923 to 1936, at the same time teaching at Mfantsipim School and Wesley Girls’ High School as visiting music master. It was during this time that he undertook a study into the Akan songs of the Cape Coast area, and made a large collection of these songs which he published in 1938 as Songs of 270

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the Akan People. This work was later in 1958 enlarged and published as Akan Songs. He was transferred to the Wesley College in Kumasi as the music master. It was also during this time that he was commissioned to compose a song for the centenary celebration of the Methodist Church, Ghana, in 1935. The song he composed, Mfeha Ndâmba, Nsâmpa Ndâmba (literally: Centenary Bells, Gospel Bells) was used by congregations of Methodist churches throughout the country, and it was one song which helped to establish Riverson as a composer of the Church. Thereafter, many organizations of the Methodist church fell on him to compose songs for the celebration of their anniversaries. But even though Riverson’s compositions were very popular at the time they were written and performed, it cannot be said that the works are still popular today because now no one group/organization in the Church uses them. The reasons are not far to find, because they were event or anniversary specific. Unlike Ephraim Amu, Riverson did not look beyond the events for which he composed to come out with text that would outlive those events.

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2. Music studies outside the country After leaving the college, the two composers became engaged in their various activities of teaching in their respective schools. Both of them moved from teaching in the senior school to a higher level on the education ladder of the country—the tertiary level. It was while they were teaching in the training college that they, at various times, received scholarships to study—Amu at the Royal Academy of Music, and Riverson at the Trinity College of Music, London. When Amu moved to Achimota College, he received an award to study music, and this award helped him develop his African music compositions. The courses he studied included Harmony and Counterpoint. It is interesting that after his study in London the tone and style of his compositions changed. He moved from the chordal/homophonic style to a more text-tone related or contrapuntal style. This helped to establish him firmly as a composer of repute and musician of standing not only in Ghana, but also across Africa. Riverson, on the hand, gained a British Council scholarship to study at the Victoria College of Music. The main 271

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subject he studied was class music teaching. He had, until the time he left for London, been engaged in classroom music teaching. It must be noted that before he left for London he had been transferred from the Wesley College in Kumasi to head the Winneba Methodist Junior and Senior Schools, and later to Sekondi as head of the Methodist Double Stream Junior and Senior schools. While Amu went back to teach at Achimota on his return from London, Riverson was posted to Komenda Training College, to Prempeh College in Kumasi, and then back to Komenda College as Vice-Principal. It is seen from the employment history of these two musicians/composers that Amu had a very good chance of trying out his ideas in music, because he was teaching at a more focused level of study, and he was not encumbered with transfers which most often than not are disruptive. Amu, at Achimota, established and directed the Achimota School of Music, a school which trained many of Ghana’s fine musicians.

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3. Contributions to music in Ghana The contributions of the two musicians to the growth of music in Ghana, especially music education and choral works, are phenomenal. The question of which meter system to use in the notation of African music was a big issue that generated a lot of discussion. While Riverson posited that it was possible to notate African melodies and rhythms in any of the established meters, Amu argued strongly that African melodies and rhythms could best be notated in simple duple, with triplets, what he termed as the ‘basic African rhythm’. Indeed in almost all of Amu’s compositions, he virtually ceased using time signatures because it became standard for him to compose in the simple duple. The two musicians composed both religious and secular works, but in either case their secular songs had religious leanings. Some examples of their secular works are Africa Marches On, Ghana enya fahodzi by Riverson, and Ânnâ yâ anigye da, San bâfa by Amu. At some point in time, during the period he taught at Akropong, Amu realized that the ranges of the traditional melodic instruments were inadequate. Those of northern Ghana used the hocket technique, the Akan mmânson (mbânson) and the Kwahu atântâ and odurugya 272

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only played the speech patterns of the language. He set to work to improve the tonal range of atântâ and odurugya in 1928. He developed the two instruments to play the diatonic heptatonic scale, and later added the odurugyaba, that is the ‘small’ odurugya. Thus, he was able to evolve a quartet of traditional woodwind instruments made up of two atântâbân, odurugyaba, and odurugya. Amu wrote extensively for the instruments and a combination of these with voices. His first compositions using traditional materials began in 1929 soon after he had perfected the range of the flutes. Not only did he write for the instruments, but he also taught his students how to play them as well as write for them. Riverson, on the hand was the first Ghanaian, after Rev. J.B Anaman, to have made a collection of Akan folk songs and to have them published. He was also a regular resource person at workshops organized by the Education Department of the then Gold Coast and the Ministry of Education of Ghana. He almost always spoke on “The Teaching of Music in Primary and Middle Schools” and “The Growth of Music in the Gold Coast.” His major preoccupation was the improvement of music teaching in Ghanaian schools. He was a church organist who composed a number of pieces for that instrument using traditional/ folk songs, most specifically tunes from the ebibindwom genre or Fanti lyrics, one example being Bô m’nanatsew (literally: Teach me to walk, or Lead me on). He also produced his own arrangements of a number of Akan songs for choral settings, underlining the importance of using ‘national’ elements in choral and instrumental works. On his retirement from the Kumasi College of Technology, Amu was invited to head the new School of Music and Drama (now the School of Performing Arts) then attached to the Institute of African Studies. He would not have been invited to take up this position if his work as a musician, composer, director, and innovator had not been taken into consideration. Such was the immense contribution he has made to Ghanaian music in general, not just choral music. Amu received an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Ghana, Legon, for the great contribution he has made to the progress of music in Ghana. Isaac Daniel Riverson, on his retirement, was appointed on contract to teach in the Government Secondary Technical School at Takoradi. In 273

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the same year he was appointed the Regional Organizer for the Western Region by the Arts Council of Ghana, during which period he organized a number of choral festivals for schools and choirs especially in the Sekondi-Takoradi area. In many of the choral festivals he encouraged the inclusion of indigenous traditional orchestras like adzewa and others to kindle interest in, and love for, traditional music. This was not surprising because, he had earlier in 1938 made a collection of Akan songs for publication, and it showed the level of interest he had in the indigenization of the music curriculum in the Ghanaian educational system, especially at the basic level. Such was the contributions he made to music education that, ten years after he left Trinity College, the institution found it desirable to award him with the Fellowship of the Trinity College (FTCL), Honoris Causa, in profound appreciation of his services to the cause of music and in acknowledgment of his talents (Andoh, 1993).

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4. Composition styles It is in the composition styles of these musicians that the expressions ‘the known’ and ‘the not known’ come out poignantly. We have made mention of the fact that Amu’s teacher, Ntem, taught him how to play the harmonium, and with the considerable interest he showed in harmonium playing, it was not surprising that he became interested in how to write his own music. This skill he acquired from Reverend Allotey-Pappoe, a Methodist minister and a fine church musician. In the preface to volume one of Amu Choral Works, Amu states that his choral music compositions are of two types: those which take the Western or European form, and those which take the African or Ghanaian form. In either of the forms, Amu’s style is seductive. This seductiveness in his style, for this writer, comes from the way he composes his text. Take for example the song Ânnâ yâ anidgye da, composed in 1931. The harmony is chordal, homophonic, but the text makes the listener to sit up, and reflect on the song in its entirety. Take a section of the text, for example: Ânnâ yâ anigye da This is a happy day Ânnâ yâ ehurusi da This is a jubilation day 274

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Opanyin anaa abofra Ôky’râfo anaa suani Yân nyinaa di’ahurusi Ôtwe anaa adowa Yân nyinaa di’ahurusi

Timothy E. Andoh

Both the old and the young Teacher or pupil We are all jubilant All and sundry We are all jubilant

The text, coupled with the melody and harmony, immediately attracts the attention of both the listener and the singer. The music is also catchy in style and it is, perhaps, the ‘catchiness’ of it that captures the interest of all who hear it for the first time. The attempt to use stock phrases in the Akan language in the songs—ôtwe anaa adowa; opanyin anaa abofra; ôkyrâfo anaa suani—reflects the national style of Amu in this work. Riverson had a style which was more like the composition types he was used to—the Western, hymn-like style of composing. He was more homophonic in style, and this style did not change with his studies at the Trinity College of Music. Riverson had also studied the songs of the Akan people to the extent of arranging some of these for choirs, but it appears he did not translate the results of these researches into all of his compositions. A number of his compositions were written for specific occasions, and Riverson in his composition of the text for the songs did not look beyond the occasions for which he wrote; in essence, he did not project his work into the future. A close look at his works reveals a limitedness which stalled the spread of his works, and thus becoming ‘the not known’ composer. Even though he composed songs for almost every historical event in the country from the Second World War to Independence and for the African Union, these were suitable only for those occasions and none other. To make possible the ultimate success of any musical work, the subject matter must match the composer’s artistic vision and technique as well as his temperament, his time or era and his individual skill. Some matching such as this accounts for the special incandescence of the vocal as well as instrumental compositions of Ephraim Amu. The fact of Amu’s musical style being very seductive has been made, and its influence has spread throughout Ghana, freeing most of his own pupils from undue obsession with Western music and in some way giving the art music of 275

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Ghana its distinctive character. He quickly imparted his knowledge to his fellow men. From his compositions, we get the impression of an almost magical convergence of what he himself calls the basic African rhythm and harmony. This impression seems too strong to be ignored. The formulation treats beautifully the whole, complicated concept in his compositions. It must be noted that the bulk of Amu’s works is choral. Perhaps a closer look at Amu’s works may provide a hint about Amu’s success as a composer. As a composer he showed mastery of text distribution, for this aimed at making his music at every point a complement of the ideas set forth in the text. This union of text and music must be complete and unbreakable. In attempting to bring about identity of purpose between text and music, the composer has various approaches at his disposal. One such approach is “word-painting,” the imitation by the music of what might be described as the skin of the text. An example is Mommyânkô so mforo (Let us keep climbing) in which the melody, following the meaning of the text, continues to ascend gradually on the text “yârâforo” (literally: we are climbing). Another example of this is the song Asomdwoe, in which everything virtually ‘freezes’ on the word “komm” (silence, quiet, peace), and text and melody are suggestive of the meaning. Another style approach, perhaps the more subtle, used by Amu, is known as soggeto cavato, the expression in music of what the text suggests, and the hinting in diverse ways at what lies beneath the surface of the meaning. One concrete example of this will be seen in the passage which closes the chorus “All we like sheep have gone astray” from Handel’s Messiah, to cite an example outside the focus of this paper. In the chorus the phrase “All we like sheep” is presented as a group, then “have gone astray” in single, diverging melodic lines; “we have turned” is a rapid, twisting and turning figure that begins and ends on the ‘same’ note, refusing to get away from its starting point; finally “everyone to his own way” is presented, with stubborn insistence, on a single repeated note, but then suddenly the point of the chorus is revealed in the closing measures, with dramatic force, in a slow, solemn, chordal presentation in minor mode: “And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Burkholder et al, 2006). Amu’s work Kô na kotutu is one that 276

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comes close to representing this style. The use of the words tutu (literally, uproot), sâe (literally, destroy), dwiri (literally, tear down), bubu (literally, break apart), and the melodic line given to them vividly bring out a pictorial expression of the text in the music, presented with a stubborn insistence on a single note that suggests the urgency with which the message is to be taken. Another example is found in Ôkôreâ Ntaban in which the phrases “wônante ara nso wô’mmerô” (literally: they walk but they do not get tired) and “wo tummirika nso wômpa abaw” (literally: they run but do not tire) are musically presented to suggest walking and running, all in twisting figures. In the first instance, the melody is conceived in a manner that is suggestive of walking, in long note values, while in the second instance the melody is suggestive of running, in short note values. Amu musically presents these melodic phrases in unison, to be taken as one voice by all the four parts, before breaking into the various harmonies. A further approach is the magic formula which has become the most telling resource of Amu in his compositional style: the rubbing together of words and music until the two appear to possess a common significance. When every shade of meaning in the text is reflected with the most religious fidelity, when musical setting is adequately knit together with the verbal substance so that even when the text is withdrawn, then its spirit and its literary identity seem still to be present in the music. This shows what skill and insight can achieve when combined to fuse text and music into one entity. This style is seen in two of Amu’s compositions: Adikanfo and Ôkôreâ Ntaban, but it is in the former that this stands out. In the Adikanfo, the text is woven into the fabric of the music, to the extent that it is almost impossible to divorce the words in the opening phrase sung by soprano and alto from the music. The nuances of the spoken text are captured and embedded into the spirit of the music, and they are so knit together that they appear as one. In Ôkôreâ Ntaban, the music and text are subjected to the same treatment, to the extent that the sense of the text is reflected in the music. In writing for the tone language areas, certain restrictions are encountered which call for extreme caution. Care must be shown to observe the tone levels and the durational values of the syllables in order to preserve the meaning of the text. This process is found in the resources of folk 277

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music and modes of drumming of the land. Amu’s adherence to this principle led him to make the salutary discovery of alternating harmony with counter-point in order to overcome this problem. The principle referred to above, which follows a tradition of vocal music style, has come to be generally accepted and practiced by composers today. But the effects of this practice are seen to impose restrictions on the art music of the land, and composers of imagination are at times side-stepping it, particularly in the direction of making art music more varied and giving more significance to melody. This, especially, might be the case if harmonic implications should demand a deviation from this strict rule for the other voices. A study of Amu’s works shows the use of a combination of every conceivable device such as rhythm, harmony, counterpoint and form. Even though one might say that he employs very simple harmonies in his works, yet the works possess power to sustain interest. Another point of interest: Amu never indicated dynamic markings in most of his works. He allowed his music and his text to do that for him, and this he did craftily. The song Asomdwoe has already been mentioned but in this respect it is one song which has been sorely abused by choirs and music directors/conductors alike. Amu’s simplicity of purpose and his use of minor details point to the direction of ‘gebrauchmusik’, that is music that is socially relevant and useful. His compositions are not only to be enjoyed by all but also designed, in a way, that all may use them. The spread of his influence is not only geographical but also social, into every kind of music making: church, school, the concert hall and home. Not that his own music is much used in all these places, but rather that his ways of thinking, in melodies, chords and tone colours, are very contagious. He always had something inspiring or thought provoking to say in his songs as well as ideas, sentiments and reflections he wanted to share. Hence, even when he wrote a piece for a friend or something to mark an event, he chose an abiding theme or message so that it could be performed on other appropriate occasions. The song Yôn ara asaase ni (literally: this land is our own) was composed for a teacher friend who had requested a song in the local language to be sung on Empire Day celebrations to replace the British song that was always used for the occasion. Amu did not 278

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restrict himself to the celebration of that event but looked far ahead of that event. The result is that today this song is representative of national sentiments and aspirations; it is an embodiment of national identity. The compositions of Riverson, on the other hand, show the use of national elements in his style, for example, the use of unisons, thirds, and octaves as harmonic intervals, as seen in Akan songs where the chorus (response) sings in thirds either below or above the solo/cantor part. These traits are seen in some of Riverson’s compositions such as “Hom Ntaa Dzinn, nyô Komm” (literally: all keep silent and quiet), “Africa Marches On!” and “God Bless Ghana.” In many traditional African societies, particularly Akan societies, there is also a predominance of singing in unison, in parallel octaves, and in parallel thirds. These are predominant in the three songs cited above. Another style trait that is found in Akan societies is the use of the call/response technique or form in singing. “God Bless Ghana” and “Africa Marches On!” are compositions which show this trait. “God Bless Ghana” which was one of the two songs selected out of over seventy-five song entries by the then Ghana Music Association to be used as the national anthem for Ghana. In a letter to the late Asantehene, Nana Sir Osei Agyemang Prempeh II in 1967, Riverson stated, among other things about a national anthem, that “the structure of the tune must bear such forms of rhythm and harmonic cadences characteristic of our traditional music”, and that “[it should] be replete with the properties of our indigenous music.” There are many characteristics of traditional music in the song, as already mentioned. It has also been noted that Riverson made a large collection of Akan songs, and concluded from his study of this collection and other traditional songs that Akan songs are more compound than simple in general metrical structure. He also concluded that it was possible to notate African rhythm within the accepted system of melodic and rhythmic notation. In writing these songs, “Africa Marches On!” and “God Bless Ghana,” Riverson uses a time signature of 12/8, that is compound quadruple time, to bring out the conclusion drawn from his collection and notation of traditional Akan songs. In using the compound time he also avoids the use of triplets—which is a hallmark of Amu, in what he terms as the basic African rhythm.

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Conclusion

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Ephraim Amu and Isaac Daniel Riverson are two contemporary Ghanaian composers who are known for their choral works. Amu, who is known as the father of Ghanaian music, composed not only choral works but also instrumental music. Riverson is also known for his choral works, but being an organist, he also composed works for the organ. These are two composers who in their various ways did a lot for the growth of Ghanaian music. This paper has looked at the lives and compositions of the two composers and tried to find out why Amu is the ‘the known’ in Ghanaian music circles, and why Riverson is ‘the not known’. Ephraim Amu attained national stature very early in his life as a creative artist and an intellectual. He combined the role of musician with that of an educator, social critic and cultural activist, for he was concerned not only with the theory and practice of music and related arts, but also with larger issues of tradition and innovation, change and progress, the role of patriotism in nation building and the moral code of civil society. What is of relevance in the lives of the composers lie not only in their contributions to the growth and development of music education and choral music in their country Ghana, but their efforts at forging and constructing of a national identity in their compositions and in their works.

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References Agawu, V. Kofi. 1984. The importance of language on musical compositions in Ghana: an introduction to the musical style of Amu. Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology XXVIII (1): 37-71 Agyemang, Fred. 1988. Amu the African: A Study in Vision and Courage. Accra: Asempa Publishers, Christian Council of Ghana. Almeida, R. 1970. The Influence of African Music in Brazil. Presented at African Music. Meeting in Yaounde organized by UNESCO. Andoh, Timothy E. 2007. The nationalistic music of I.D. Riverson. Legon Journal of the Humanities. 18: 159-177. Andoh, Timothy E. 1993. An analytical study of the choral compositions of I.D. Riverson. Unpublished MPhil thesis. Department of Music, University of Ghana, Legon. Baeta, C.G. 1967. Aspects of Religion: A Study of Contemporary Gold Coast. Vol. II. Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald J Grout and Claude V. Palisca. 2006. A History of Western Music seventh edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Nketia, J.H.K. 1978. A typology of contemporary Ghanaian choral music. Seminar on Contemporary Choral Music. University of Ghana, Legon. Nketia, J.H.K. 1963. Folk Songs of Ghana. London: Oxford University Press. Mensah, A.A. 1991. Compositional practice in African music. Unpublished manuscript.

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Turkson, A.A.R. 1987. A voice in the African process of crossing from the traditional to the modern: The Music of E. Amu. Journal of Ultimate Reality and Meaning 10(1). Williamson, S.G. 1965. Akan Religion and the Christian Faith: A Comparative Study of the Impact of Two Religions. (Ed.) K.A. Dickson. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.

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The Performing Arts: Identity and the New Social Paradigm

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The Performing Arts: Identity and the New Social Paradigm F. Nii-Yartey The performing arts and other traditional art forms have fostered social cohesion and inspired identity in many Ghanaian communities for centuries. British rule in the Gold Coast sought to malign the integrity of the performing arts. Subsequently, Kwame Nkrumah set up various artistic and cultural institutions with generous support, to help mitigate the destructive aspects of the colonial legacy. This paper reveals the performing arts as agencies for the coherent promotion of indigenous social values, and suggests ways music and dance can help Ghanaians advance our search for a viable national memory and unifying identity.

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Introduction The question I wish to pose is not whether the performing arts are relevant and capable vehicles in the construction of a viable national identity in Ghana today, but rather whether Ghanaians are ready to create the necessary conditions that will enable the nation to take full advantage of the arts as catalysts for unity and development. The role of the performing arts in the creation of a meaningful national identity has become sporadic and provincial; in recent times these kinds of contribution from indigenous artists and community groups go chiefly unacknowledged at the national level. This is partly due to a general inability of the population to appreciate the cultural aspects of who they are in a fast-changing world. Change has been rapid, but not altogether substantive. The distressing experience of colonization which so profoundly affected and shaped the artistic, political and socio-cultural lives of Ghanaians a hundred years ago has left a residual legacy of negative attitudes towards indig282

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enous cultures and a wholesale denial of self worth that undermines the acceptance of traditional performing arts, along with the rituals and ceremonies associated with them. This remains especially the case among many formally educated Ghanaians. For instance for a long time many Ghanaians have preferred being called by their Western names rather than by their Ghanaian names without thinking about how this might impact upon their social integrity. On the other hand, perhaps it is commendable that colonialism helped to create one political system, bringing the various ethnic communities together under one administrative authority. This might be seen as a positive head start for national unity and identity—even though the original motive of the foreigner was to dominate. In spite of all the challenges, the resilience of Ghanaians in resisting colonialism facilitated the survival of the arts and culture of the people, as captured in this excerpt from the poet Kofi Anyidoho’s “Memory and Vision” (Anyidoho 2002: 31): And those who took away our Voice They are now surprised They couldn’t take away our Song.

Nor could they take away our dance.

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1. The role of the performing arts All the disasters of mankind, all the misfortunes that histories are so full of, the blunders of politicians, the miscarriage of great commanders—all this comes from want of dancing ability. Jean-Baptiste Paquelin (Molière) (1984: 14)

The performing arts constitute the most potent physical, emotional and psychological manifestation of culture. According to James K. Anquandah’s definition culture is: “Lifestyle as manifested by a particular people or society.”1 So it is man-made, not genetically inherited. It is evolved for the purpose of living. It is socially taught and learned. It originates as human response to the local physical and biological 1

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environment. Cultural traditions look to the past for their mandate, authority and authenticity as cultural traits are regarded as society’s norms handed down the generations. However, as Anquandah observes, “culture is dynamic” and so it is continually affected by local and external influences and stimuli. Each of the performing art forms of the different cultures that make up modern Ghana has the potential of contributing to a national symbol of identity, as some of them have clearly demonstrated since independence. The most obvious example is popular High Life, seen by many as a national music and dance form. Traditional dances like the Adowa and Kete of the Asantes, the Kpanlogo of the Ga, the Agbadza of the Ewes, the Damba of the Dagomba, have all crossed their initial borders and are patronized today by people outside their areas of origin. Of late, these cultural exchanges have been partly due to the research and performance activities of national artistic institutions, including the National Festivals of Arts and Culture, the National Folkloric Company of the Arts Council (the precursor of today’s National Commission on Culture), the Ghana Dance Ensemble of the University of Ghana, and private amateur music and dance groups dotted all over the country. Many of these agencies organize annual or one-off social activities, moving and reflecting a variety of traditional art forms around the country. But long before these modern agencies were established, cultural exchange was a key expression of traditional diplomacy. Depending upon the importance attached to the relationship being sought, some of the most valuable forms of social, political, and economic alliance have been conceived over the centuries in terms of dance, music, and other artistic vehicles among the various communities throughout our country and in many other parts of Africa. For example, the Obonu drums played during the Nmaafaa (millet harvesting) ceremony in connection with the annual Homowo festival of Ga people of Accra, originally were a gift to Nii Okaidza, chief of the Gbese quarter of Accra, by Dede Adu of Asene Gomoa (Reindorf 1966: 92). The presentation is said to have cemented an already cordial relationship between the coastal Ga communities and the people of Asene Gomoa in the Central Region. Throughout our history, as territories have expanded, ascendant powerful states have realized the need to ensure that peace and har284

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mony prevail among captors and captives in the aftermath of war. In general, knowledge of the arts has provided an avenue for the practice of diplomacy: the understanding and respect for other people’s cultural and artistic values often involved incorporating and appropriating their cultural achievements. For this reason conquerors have often spared the lives of craftsmen, dancers, and musicians captured in battle in order to learn their skills. So for example at the time of the Asante expansion, cultural values were projected in a manner that encouraged emulation. The Asantes borrowed Donno and Brekete drums from the Dagomba and added these instruments to their Mpintim, Kete, Adowa and Sanga music and dance forms. The Dagomba in turn adopted the Atumpan drum of the Ashanti to enrich their music and dance culture. The Wala people of Wa in the Upper-West Region of Ghana play the Duom, an adaptation of the Atumpan drum of the Asante. The Ga and Ewe also borrowed the Atumpan and Fontonfrom drums. The Asante and Fante Asafo dance of warrior organizations are practiced by other Ghanaians, notably the Ga and Ewe-speaking people. The Otu cult dance of the Fante was once ‘purchased’ by the Ga people to help the latter in times of war. These are all clear examples of cultural diffusion that may ultimately lead to the creation of national dance forms. Thus, in spite of the obvious diversity that characterizes our various ethnic groups, there exists a common philosophical thread running through them all in the practice of their performing arts, viz. the value of sharing in the assertion and renewal of cordial human relationships.2 Thus music and dance might be seen historically as the key expression of Ghanaian political harmony. If this is the kind of identity we as a nation want to project of ourselves, then we need to consider today’s background of globalization as an opportunity, not as an obstacle or impediment, for asserting our national identity. Many of us do not grasp fully what is involved in a national identity, or how to define it beyond the fervor and the allegiance we all think we owe to our country’s special icons. This includes a level of commitment 2

Assimeng (1981: 76) encapsulates the persona of the Ghanaian as “. . . Conformity and blatant eschewing of individual speculation; unquestioning acquiescence; lack of self-reliance, owing to the pervading influence of extended family system, fetish worship of authority and charismatic leaders; and hatred of criticism . . . ”

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to the National flag, the Black Stars football team, a conspicuous pride when our boxers win world titles, a conspicuous allegiance to our political parties, the wearing of Kente cloth, or Batakari, or other traditional outfits and, finally, in the token support we give to our national music, dance and drama companies (if ever we support them at all). To substantively participate in the performing arts, however, one must understand at least some of the norms and principles inherent in our cultural and artistic heritage. Our understanding of these norms will invariably help us to interpret, develop and appropriate the performing arts in a way that will give meaning and context to our shared values and to our quest for an internationally visible, palpable national identity. My observation is that even though the average Ghanaian participates in some artistic activity as a matter of course, most of us see no connection and make no deliberate effort to channel such activities to support national development. If no more an embarrassment, we take our cultural identity in the international arena for granted. I think this is a mistake. At the very least we are missing a golden opportunity to enhance economic development at a national level. Contemporary social analysts have observed that “. . . . we are surrounded today by tourism [and other economic ventures] particularly from the global North, [forcing us] to market our identities, life styles, and sense of belonging through consumption . . . ” (Ebron 2002: 163). Couldn’t contemporary Ghanaians utilize the performing arts to forward the national agenda far more than they have done so far? Of course, the answer is there for all to see. Currently the influence of Africans is felt all over the world and continues unabated, but it does so almost unwittingly and without much concerted corporate effort exerted by Africans themselves. Farris Thompson (1983: xiii) observes the fact that: [M]uch of the popular music of the world is informed by the flash of the spirit of a certain people [Africans] specially armed with improvisatory drive and brilliance . . . Ancient African organizing principles of song and dance have crossed the seas from the old world to the new world . . . They took on new momentum, intermingling with each other.

Thompson (1983: ibid) highlights some of the prominent features and principles guiding the performing arts in Africa: 286

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The dominance of a percussive style (attack and vital aliveness in sound and motion), a propensity for multiple meter (competing meters sounding all at once), overlapping call and response in singing (solo / chorus — voice / instrument – interlocking system of performance), inner pulse control (a metronome sense, keeping a beat indelibly in mind as rhythmic common denominator in a welter of different meters), suspended accentuation patterning (off beat phrasing of melodic and choreographic accents).

Other principles of the performing arts which may be useful in understanding our artistic forms are as follows: Improvisation and Repetition: African cosmology reflects a continuity of experience and a reoccurring relationship between the past and the present; the ancestors and the living; the unexpected and the familiar. Repetition and improvisation are products of this concept (Tierou 1989: 18-19). Circular Images and Symbolism: The notion of beauty in body posture is conceptualized in terms of ‘curves’ and other circular images. The body is almost always slightly rounded, the knees relaxed, while the weight of the movement is earth bound. The belief is that circular images give a sense of perpetual motion and completeness of being. Limited exaggeration of movement: Many African dance movements tend to follow the natural functions and form of the body. Any unexplained departure from this basic concept by over stretching or extension or any form of rigidity is viewed as exaggeration and therefore, considered aesthetically inappropriate. Contextual reference: A particular dance or musical form, for example, may be performed in different contexts. It may be performed at a wedding ceremony of a member, or on another occasion it may be performed at a funeral, and so on. In each case, the dynamics of the dance or the music—the movements, facial expressions, gestures, the rhythm, the accompanying songs and other details, will vary to reflect the specific context in which the performance is taking place. Interrelationship of music, dance and drama: In Africa, it is often said that “[w]hen the beats of the drums die down, usually the dancing also ceases . . . ” (Nketia 1963: 163). The ethos of dance, drama and musical interrelationship manifests in the evocation of the right 287

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The Performing Arts: Identity and the New Social Paradigm

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atmosphere for a given occasion, the provision of rhythmic impetus for collective consciousness, the basis for dramatic action and stimulation for group performance. As observed by Welsh-Asante (1998: 207): “The key factor in both music and dance and drama that an African dancer will always look for is the rhythm . . . . Rhythm remains the central core to any expression of African culture and consequently the center of any analysis that is conducted . . . Costumes: One important aspect of the African tradition is the variety and colours of costumes identifying social roles of community members and enhancing their various social activities, including their different dance forms. Other features depicted by costumes include the social, political, and even the financial status, of the people wearing them. The maintenance of these aesthetic conventions and artistic principles are both an individual and collective responsibility. As individuals, our identities in the activities of the arts become the collective vision of a shared memory which helps to determine the formation of a national identity. The character and comportment of individual members of the various communities—their generosity, their code of dressing, the names they carry, their interest and participation in the creative activities of the community, their interrelationships, their attitude to work and life generally, all create a sense of identity, both within and without. We must also see that these elements are constantly harnessed, developed and nurtured through creative norms and principles of the community. The performing arts inspire us to think more deeply about our values, i.e., about questions concerning our national unity and identity. Often a rapturous appreciation of our traditional and contemporary art forms can easily ignite a unifying political and nationalistic passion. For instance, pride and national nostalgia for past and present glories and achievements were witnessed during the Ghana 2008 Opening Ceremony. During such functions, elements of the various art forms representing the different ethnic traditions are brought together and woven into one spectacular artistic production. This in effect creates and reflects a powerful and indelible national image. In the process of creating these celebratory events, over thousands of young men and women comprising the bulk of the performing cast interact socially, 288

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artistically, psychologically, and nationally: sharing, arguing, sometimes fighting, but in the end forging friendships that last a lifetime, and so may be passed on to the next generation. Some historical retrospection will confirm this point.

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2. Post Independence efforts Throughout the checkered history of the performing arts in post-independent Ghana, it was during the Nkrumah’s era, and to some extent during Rawlings’ administration, that specific and conscious efforts were made to use the performing arts as tools for development and to unify the people in the country’s quest for a national identity. On attainment of independence from British colonial rule in 1957, the first president of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was confronted with many challenges. First and foremost, he had to put in place structures that would help to reverse the bitter legacy of the colonial past. He also had to reconcile a polarized nation of more than forty ethnic groups. His main difficulty was how to deal with the existing ethnic fragmentation and tension generated in both the aftermath of colonialism and through the elections that brought him into power. Some of Nkrumah’s political opponents, including his own party officials, had played ruthlessly upon ethnic and other sentiments as an election strategy for political advantage. To face these difficulties Nkrumah applied the many different local artistic traditions into a single concept of Ghanaian culture in which the diversity of Ghana artistic traditions was bound together by a common Ghanaian sensibility. He saw the traditional arts as one of the most appropriate tools available to him, to help address the challenges confronting the young nation. Nkrumah approved the establishment of an Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana at Legon in 1961. In 1962, a School of Music, Dance and Drama and a Dance Ensemble were also created under the Institute. In establishing these institutions, Nkrumah realized a vision by another Ghanaian creative thinker, Casely Hayford, who asked, “. . . how may the West African be trained so as to preserve his national identity and race instincts?” Under this kind of inspiration, the School of Music, Dance and Drama was charged with 289

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The Performing Arts: Identity and the New Social Paradigm

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the responsibility of training young Ghanaians and other Africans who would help to direct the arts towards new frontiers without sacrificing the positive elements of the past. The Dance Ensemble was to serve as a repertory for the traditional dances of Ghana, and to some extent all of Africa. It was also to serve as a laboratory for research for Fellows of the Institute. An Institute of Arts and Culture was set up in the heart of the community of Accra, and directly answered to the office of the president, to advise on cultural and artistic policies of government.

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3. The Ghana Dance Ensemble One of the most visible and successful achievements of Nkrumah’s cultural and artistic vision for the country was a nationwide recruitment exercise conducted by the Ghana Dance Ensemble. This enabled the Ensemble to select dancers and musicians to serve as special ambassadors of their respective Traditional Areas in the Ensemble. Strategically selected dancers and musicians from all over the country were brought to the University of Ghana campus, the permanent base of the Ensemble. These performers were taken through a period of intensive training during which each recruited member took turn to teach the others dances and musical motifs from his or her own region. Led by seasoned researchers, lecturers, and resource personnel, the recruits learned from each other not only the rudiments of their respective art forms, but also background information, history, and social functions of the dances. The process did not stop there: after a period of research, training and experiments, Nkrumah sent the Ensemble on a tour to all regions of the country, taking along the ‘transformed’ artists and the dances and the accompanying musical forms back to their origins, as it were, so that the performers could share their results with their various communities. While performing in each region, the strategy was to ensure that within the ensemble, those who were indigenous to a particular area were outnumbered by the non-indigenous members of the Ensemble on stage. Community leaders and local traditional rulers were often present at these performances. Interestingly, while the performances were in progress, the audiences in most cases could not identify who was from their own area and who was not. The performers had to 290

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The Performing Arts: Identity and the New Social Paradigm

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introduce themselves by name and announce their ethnic background before many of the spectators noticed any difference among them. After one such performance circa 1964, the Navro-Pio, paramount chief of the Navrongo Traditional Area, summed up the success of the programme in these words: “If anybody who does not come from my culture could devote his or her time and energy to learn and perform my dances so perfectly, then that person must have a lot of respect and love for me and my people.” This was a profound statement from such a high seat, because at that time the people of the Northern part of the country in many ways felt neglected and overlooked in the mainstream affairs of the country. The chief ’s testimony reverberated throughout the tour. Subsequently, other performing arts groups—the National Folkloric Company of Accra’s Arts Council, the Workers’ Brigade Concert Party, Osagyefo Players, and others—undertook similar tours around the country. The international dimension of this successful policy was achieved around 1965. Subsequently Nkrumah intensified his diplomatic relationship with the Eastern European block, again sending the Ghana Dance Ensemble on a seven country European tour to project a rich and formidable Ghanaian identity abroad. As was to be expected, when the Ghanaians went out to town shopping and sight-seeing, they were met with suspicion and strange behavior. Some Europeans literally ran for their lives; others came and carefully rubbed their fingers on the skin of the visiting Ghanaians. However, after each performance by the Ensemble when the magic of the performing arts had conspired with the excitement of the moment, members of the audience would come backstage to embrace the performers and ask for their autographs and addresses. Later in the streets the people would ask for photographs with members of the Ensemble. These anecdotes reveal how traditional music and dance functioned as a main engine of Nkrumah’s recovery of the dignity of Africans, and his attempt to create a common national identity. Through his tremendous support of the performing arts, Nkrumah’s efforts at the time were geared towards a pan Africanist and nationalistic agenda. One could detect this in his exclusion of anything with definite foreign trappings or with experimental artistic content. His control over artistic content was 291

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The Performing Arts: Identity and the New Social Paradigm

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viewed by some as narrowly tainted with Nkrumah’s political ambitions. Some critics saw his efforts as unrealistic and alien to the experiences of Ghanaians whose views were affected by many years of interaction with the West through colonialism and formal education. Nevertheless it is important to appreciate the fact that, Nkrumah’s policy gave a premium to the traditional art forms that was unprecedented at the time. In his address to inaugurate the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in 1963, Nkrumah clarified his purpose when he said (1963: 16):

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The personality of the African which was stunted in this process (colonial) can only be retrieved from these ruins if we make conscious effort to restore Africa’s ancient past…I would [however] emphasize the need for a re-interpretation and a re-assessment of the factors which make up our past.

Of course Nkrumah also realised that a national personality is not static. “As the aims and needs of our society change, so our educational institutions must be adjusted and adapted to reflect this change . . .” (Nkrumah 1963: 16) Colonialism and subsequent participation of Ghanaian soldiers in World War II failed to benefit Ghanaians in many ways. Yet these adverse conditions provided the opportunity to interact with Caribbean and other New World cousins as well as with Europeans, accelerated mobility and the exchange of political, economic and artistic ideas. These experiences yielded an immense transformation of the performing arts in Ghana. The Concert Party tradition, for instance, was born out of a combination of European influences, American Minstrel Shows, and the Ghanaian tradition of parable story- telling. Perhaps the most famous of hybrid art forms to emerge was High Life music and dance—a synthesis of Caribbean Calypso, the European ballroom dancing, and traditional drum rhythms and dance movements from all around Ghana.

4. The post-Nkrumah period Despite the tremendous promise engendered by High Life and these other artistic forms that emerged with the spirit of political Independence, Ghanaians have failed to capture and sustain an enduring 292

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The Performing Arts: Identity and the New Social Paradigm

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national identity over fifty years down the line. As I read the historical narrative, with the advent of the Cold War, Ghana plunged into the material world of cars and plush homes, drugs, promiscuous filth and political acrimony. The Ghanaian preoccupation with crass materialism unwittingly created an image of self-abandon on a national scale. This is recapitulated formally in an economic ‘open door’ policy to attract foreign investment. While America was going through their ideological rivalry with the Soviet Union, Ghana was at the brink of emancipation from the yoke of colonialism. While America needed to redeem her image from (what the Soviets described as) “gum-chewing, insensitive, materialistic barbarians” (Foner 1998: 3) and build a counter-image of freedom and prosperity, Ghanaians were preoccupied with changing their image from that of a colonized people to one a free and self determined nation. America was conducting a war with the Soviets to ‘capture hearts and minds’, while Ghana was internally ‘at war’ with her own British legacy and ethnic fragmentation. The two countries each used the performing arts to redeem and project a positive image of their countries to the outside world. Yet to this day, the performing arts in the United States remain a key ingredient in American identity as its image gets projected abroad. Alongside the Peace Corps in the 1950s and 1960s, American artists were considered by the US government as potential ambassadors to exhibit the greatness of America.3 The excellence of what they did showed the world that the United States was not a country interested only in weapons, refrigerators, and movies. A formidable legacy was left for the arts through the National Endowment for the Arts and philanthropic agencies both private and para-statal. Funding remained consistent and lasted well into the 1970s. The American experience bore clear similarities to what Nkrumah sought to do in Ghana. In contrast, Ghana’s government funding for the arts was cut short with the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966—leaving everything gained in the process to chance. The vision and direction for national development through the arts as a unifying symbol was abandoned. 3

[Likewise, artists’ power to malign the reputation of the United States was taken as traitorous in the 1950s.—Ed.]

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5. The present period

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Today, Ghanaians seem to have lost the propensity and the vision to adequately support and organize the performing arts as catalysts to overcome the accidents of globalization. The phenomena of globalization require constant personal and collective resistance and reaffirmation insofar as our national aspirations and goals are concerned. Since the fall of Nkrumah, we dismantled our film industry, a key facility for the dissemination of Ghana’s artistic programmes and identity, and turned it into a TV station projecting foreign values at the expense of Ghanaian ones. Most local films have been either destroyed or damaged. Until recently most of the country’s newspapers and radio stations have been more interested in promoting foreign interests rather than indigenous Ghanaian values. Policy makers who came after Nkrumah’s demise in 1966 have not sustained nor enhanced our national identity, despite the formulation of a national policy for culture and constitutional provisions to address artistic development. Nevertheless the performing arts today have become agents of national unity and identity the world over. They constitute a key competitive advantage economically through their potential contribution to the tourist industry. The answers to our present challenges do not lie in our past alone; neither can they be addressed through imported knowledge and strategies unaided.

Conclusion Building a robust national identity has become an important project, given increased mobility and interaction among the various communities across the world. Crafting an image of a nation depends in large measure upon the ability of its citizens to appropriately symbolize national principles and aspirations through the performing arts. For it is the performing arts that constitute the main channel of appropriation and provide a direct route to community participation, bringing value and celebratory significance to every social situation. The performing arts are the visible connection between the present and the distant past which facilitate 294

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our close examination of our past achievements and present conditions (Nii-Yartey 2006: 20-22). In Africa, this organic linking of the present to the distant past has been disrupted by the humiliations of colonial intrusion, just as socio-economic development has been hamstrung by a negative colonial heritage and multi-ethnic conflict. We cannot continue to live in the past. Neither can we afford the luxury of relegating the lessons of the past to the periphery of our developmental agenda. The poet Kofi Anyidoho (2002: 23, 29) in his “Memory and Vision,” speaks of the need to confront this yawning gap in our modernity: There is a journey we all must make into our Past in order to come to terms with our Future. ... No matter how far away we try to hide away from Ourselves we will have to come back Home and find out Where and How and Why we lost the Light in our Eyes.

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One aspect of this call for sankofa is the initiative to nurture our artistic and cultural strengths, alongside our scientific and political potentials. We must take care that none is thrown into the abyss of ignorance and inaction, as Anyidoho admonishes us (2002: 23, 26): Back home here here in Africa we perform our Resurrection Dance in the company of Hyenas pretending to be Royal Ancestors. ... And if today we seem lost among Shadows we must probe the deep Night of our Blood and seek out our Birth-Cord from the garbage heap of History’s crowded Lies.

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References Anquandah, James K. n.d. Ghana’s Cultural Heritage and its Management. Ghana’s National Commission on Culture Accessed December 2009. Anyidoho, Kofi. 1992. Unpublished speech delivered at the Open Day of the Institute of African Studies and the School of Performing Arts, the University of Ghana, Legon. Anyidoho, Kofi. 2002. Praise Song for theLand - Poems of Hope & Love & Care. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers. Arhin, Kwame. 1992. Unpublished speech delivered at the Open Day of the Institute of African Studies and the School of Performing Arts, the University of Ghana. Assimeng, Max. 1981. The Social Structure of Ghana. Tema: Ghana Broadcasting Company. Ebron, A. Paula. 2002. Performing Africa. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Greene, Sandra E. 1998. Developing the Arts for Development in Ghana. Africa Notes, Bulletin of the Institute for African Development. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University. (February) pp. 1-5. Nii-Yartey, F. 2006. Globalization and African Culture: The role of the Arts. Legon Journal of the Humanities. Legon: University of Ghana, pp. 20-22. Nketia, Kwabena, J. H. 1963. Drumming in Akan Communities of Ghana. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1963. The African Genius. Speech delivered at the Opening of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. Reprinted (2010) in Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives. (eds) Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho. Accra: Sub Saharan Publishers.

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Paquelin, Jean Baptiste (Moliere). 1984. The Dance Note Book. Philadelphia: Running Press Book Publishers. Prevots, Naina and Eric Foner. 1998. Dance for Export – Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War. Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. Reindorf, C. C. 1966. (1895). The History of Gold Coast and Ashanti. Accra: Ghana Universities Press. Thompson, Farris Robert. 1983. Flash of Spirit: African and Afro-American Art & Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books. Tierou, Alphonse. 1989. Doople—The eternal law of African dance. London: Harwood Academic Publishers. Welsh-Asante, Kariamu. 1998. Zimbabwean Dance Aesthetic: Senses, Canons, and Characteristics. African Dance: An Artistic, Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. Kariamu Welsh Asante (ed.) Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press.

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Welsh-Asante, Kariamu. 2004. African Dance. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers.

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